An Idyll in Gunpowder
by Petit Parapluie
Summary: Setauket in 1775 is a place where nothing as it seems. Stirring uneasily under the occupation of the regiment, even peddlers of illusion and misdirection can become hopelessly lost in the mire of deceit, lies, and desperate secrets ... Set before Season 1.
1. Dramatis Personae

Prologue, 1752

Before the war began, no-one would have said that Bartholomew Lowndes was a man likely to ever see a turn in his fortunes.

After all, years of prosperity had done _nothing_ for 'Babbling' Barty Lowndes; and he was a man who had opportunities a-plenty. He had been a barrister's second son who had a natural bent for art, and despite his parents' fond and exasperated attempts to turn him towards a more profitable trade, "young Barty" had left the stern respectable Protestantism of his family's house in search of his fortune - to follow his Muse, wherever she led him.

His Muse led him a merry dance that would have scandalised his parents. When he had money, he could be found 'in sweet rest' in Holy Ground or drowning his senses in cheap gin-shops. When the money ran out, he would take to his pencil again and frequent the riotous student coffee-houses, where furtive papers were brandished about . Bartholomew would draw amusing satires and obscene caricatures of politicians on the back of law pamphlets, on crumpled sheets of Blackstone's _Commentaries –_ or sometimes on the backs of illicit newspapers. It was an easy-come, easy-go sort of life.

At some point, the desire for something more meaningful than a cursory transaction with an experienced whore must have burdened Master Lowndes' soul, for he married a shy laundress who washed his sheets. She had fancied handsome Mr Lowndes and his fine paints as a shining idol, free with his coin and filled to the brim with talent – and who was to say her nay?

His parents, needless to say, cut him off without a word.

But, against all the odds, Barty and his wife were _happy_. They suited each other, even if Babble lived in a state of happy intoxication, letting his wife drift gently beside him on a wave of cheap meat pies and small ale.

Master Lowndes lived more on his wife's income from washing shirts than she did on the fruits of his labours– but they made do, somehow, and that was enough. Barty made a few odd shillings from grateful landlords in exchange for touching up the faded paint on tavern signs. Sometimes – miracle of miracles! There was an unexpected windfall ; a flat portrait of the landlord's adoring wife and children was requested. Or a sporting print of a favourite dog, or horse.

The couple of pounds this brought in became more and more necessary, as time went by. The little laundress's belly rose and fell with the turn of the years. Necessity made an artist of Bartholomew in a way his 'studies' never had.

Those were the good years. There was little time for the old pleasures. He built up a solid reputation as an affordable, methodical portrait painter who delivered on time. Barty was moved to wear a coat , called himself seriously by his Christian name, and talk of respectability. He even painted a portrait of his own little brood, on three boards nailed together – himself, his wife, and his six children.

Four didn't reach adulthood. Nathaniel, his eldest, died of scarlet fever before he was a year old, and the twins – two small girls, fair as flax – didn't long survive him. Joshua took a chill with his mother one cold winter. They were buried in a small pauper's plot together with the other pitifully small headstones – all of them no larger than a child's horn-book.

It was then that the joy went out of Mr Lowndes. Oh, something like a ghost of amiability remained in its wake – but it was drowned beneath a sea of October ale and the sharp acrid smell of Dutch _jenever_. The old drinking habits began in earnest.

The Lowndes family portrait was nailed to the back of a dull study of Highland cattle and shut up at the bottom of Bartholomew's old trunk. He couldn't bear to part with the painted happiness that once was - but Babble never wanted to look at its mocking aspect again.

When Babbling Barty had finally looked down at his two remaining children (Alexander, eight, and Elizabeth, four) he took up his brush again. He began, albeit sluggishly, to wrestle with fickle fortune once more. But it was with the weakening grip of a man who knows he is beaten; who waits for the finishing blow.

What was left of the decimated Lowndes family – a shambling father, half-smothered in shrunken grey wool, with a small boy and a diminutive girl hanging to each hand– left the city of New York – and seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. No-one in the city could have told you what happened to Barty Lowndes and his paints –

Until the war began.

* * *

Setauket, 1776

It was a time of singular unease in Setauket. Sullen, grey autumn had blown in from the sea with its endless rain and countless storms – and for a town that mostly depended on the sea for its living and its trade, the foul weather cast a gloom over almost everyone. The farmers further inland weren't much better off. Too much rain meant their crops rotted in the fields almost as it ripened.

So it was a matter of some surprise that a post-coach carrying a portrait-painter, of all things, should have landed in Setauket, closely followed by a carrier's cart bearing all the obscure paraphernalia of his trade. Whilst some of the Setauket gentry had the odd severe oil-painting or Dutch interior, precious few had the money to spare for picture-painting; or indeed, the inclination to spend hard-won money on anything as frivolous as a _portrait_.

But Mr Lowndes – an affable elderly gentleman with the bright pink cheeks and highly-coloured nose of the affable drunk – proved surprisingly amiable on the subject of fees.

'Anything you can spare, dear sir!' he hiccupped genially, waving an expansive hand towards the startled sergeant standing guard. 'Bartholomew Lowndes, my good sir, is no stranger to customers of limited means! I humbly accept _any_ little – ah, shall we say _testament_ \- to my artistic efforts? I am sure your commanding officers would _appreciate_ -'

'Can't let you do that, sir,' the sergeant said firmly, leaning slightly back to avoid the rich smell of second-hand port oozing from the "artist." God alone knew what Major Hewlett would say to a fat civilian smelling of liquor reeling merrily up into the heart of his military base. 'I can let him know you're here, if you like. But that's it, you hear? No guarantee he'll _want_ anything-'

'Splendid!' Mr Lowndes beamed. Over his shoulder, a small sliver of face in a travelling hood framed by a slice of cap dipped its head. The sergeant was surprised – he hadn't seen the wisp of a girl behind her father's bulk. 'I could hardly ask for anything _more_ than an introduction! By the bye – is there a decent inn where myself and my fragile little daughter could stay? Somewhere …respectable?'

'Somewhere _cheap_ ,' said the girl in the travelling-hood, severely.

'Now, now, m'dear…'

The guard shifted his musket, uncomfortably. It would be sentry change soon, and he wanted to shrug off the responsibility of these awkward strangers as soon as possible.

'There's only one ale-house,' he said shortly. 'Master Strong's place, down towards the docks. There's rooms, if you've a mind to 'em.'

He coughed and stared straight ahead, sharply indicating that the conversation was _over_.

It didn't stop him from listening in as the cart rattled on towards Setauket proper, though. A very different conversation was taking place.

' _Lizzie, my dear -that was_ _ **very**_ _indelicate. A gentleman never refers to any… monetary embarrassments in front of strangers!'_

' _Even when it's true?'_

' _Half of our business is smoke and mirrors, my girl! And don't you forget it. Now – how much shall we have to pay_ _ **this**_ _time ?'_

Mr Strong – a dark, glowering man of few words, accepted his guests without question – although he named his price with the confidence of an innkeeper who knows he has the only business in town.

'Hot water's extra. If you want meals too, that's an extra sixpence. Laundry is -'

'Extra?'

The landlord glared at Mr Lowndes' smiling face. 'Anything _wrong_ with my prices?'

'Not at all, my good man, not at all. Only – I wonder… Lizzie, my dear?'

Lizzie, lips pressed thin, wordlessly handed over a pathetically small purse made out of a scrap of cotton, embroidered clumsily with love-knots. It jingled slightly.

'Don't spend _all_ of it, Pa,' she said warningly.

My dear! You dear Papa is the very pink of frugality!' Mr Lowndes said reproachfully – but his eyes were already greedily surveying the glass bottles on the shelf, assessing. Weighing up the amber liquid.

'I wonder, my good sir – a bowl of rum punch? To warm my chilled bones? And if you would join me?'

'Pa? There's the trunks to-'

Lizzie gave up half-way through her sentence. Pa was already firmly drawing his reluctant host aside by one sleeve, explaining the values of whiskey punch as opposed to rum.

She shrugged to herself. It was late. There was little to be done with Pa at this hour – and besides, apart from her father's paints and canvases, there was precious little to cart up to the small poky rooms at the top of the inn. Two packing trunks, her father's old travelling case – and a battered old valise with someone else's initials that her father had picked up in a pawn shop in Boston.

The warm, hop-laden fugs of the Strong Tavern washed over Lizzie's face again as she pushed open the door from the stairs. Inns always seemed to have a peculiar smell; the stale smell of sleepy drunks. Although here it mingled not unpleasantly with a faint under-current of pine from the carefully laid fire in the hearth. For a rural drinking den, it was much better than she had expected. Most of the places she and Father had visited were more… basic. Here there was a panelled snuggery, and a few chipped draughts boards, heavily scored with careless knifepoints –even a few heavily creased broadsheets left scattered about. It looked like Selah Strong could afford basic comfort for his customers in Setauket.

 _Maybe it'll be different, this time._ Lizzie thought. _Maybe we'll stay. Maybe_ -

To her mild surprise , she wasn't the _only_ girl looking for her father near the ale taps. A plump maiden with her hair scraped back into a severe Dutch coif was pulling at a slumped figure in the corner, murmuring ' _Vader, sta op! wees so goed…'_

She exchanged a startled glance with Lizzie as she passed by the table, her eyes wide and frightened at seeing another woman in the tavern. She must be worried about her _reputation_ , Lizzie thought pityingly. Perhaps her father didn't frequent alehouses - or drink - quite as much as Lizzie's own father did.

Lizzie had been wandering in and out of taverns, coffee-houses and gin-shops all her life – almost before she had learned to walk. After all, Father's business was mostly there. And despite everything, she had good memories to go with them. There'd been the happy week spent at the Rose and Crown in the late summer of '58; New Dorp had been a haze of apple-scrumping and chasing games for Lizzie and Alexander that summer. Pa hadn't drunk as much, then. Later, in Boston, Addison's Coffee-House had needed a sign repainting _and_ witty mottoes painting all about its plaster walls, keeping Pa at his brushes - and best yet, Mr Addison had commissioned a portrait for his parlour of himself, double-chinned in an old-fashioned periwig. Alexander had made a mess of the brushwork, but Mr Addison had been pleased. Pa had three guineas for the work – and the promise of more besides…

But things had gone sour in Boston. Not just the war, but with Pa. Alexander and Pa had quarrelled then.

It hadn't been the last fight they'd have.

Their next place, the Three Cripples Inn in New York proper, had been managed by a round, comfortable widow lady who all but adopted Lizzie for the three months Father dawdled over the sign. She would have kept them both longer if Pa hadn't spent his fee so quickly on ale in _other_ alehouses – or been quite so drunk…

Lizzie still dreamt she was back at the Three Cripples sometimes. Those were sad dreams; they left her feeling lost and guilty. The Widow West had lost a daughter to smallpox a year before, and she would have certainly kept Lizzie– if Lizzie could let Pa go. But there couldn't be any choice between life with Pa or without him. Pa _needed_ her. And she couldn't have left him. That year had been the year Alexander –

Lizzie shook herself, sharply. She wasn't going to think about that. But she would have given kingdoms to not see the Widow West's face fall as she said 'no…'

'Lemon, Mr Strong! That is the secret! Spices, yes, for a decent rum punch – but a quart of lemon juice with your lump sugar, and a man may float like King Bacchus on a wash of delight!'

Pa was holding a sort of tipsy council in the middle of the room before a large pewter punch bowl, expounding on the proper measure like an alchemist giving a lecture.

A couple of off-duty privates goggled in fascination. Soldiers took kindly to anyone with a large bowl of piping alcohol on hand – and certainly, the locals didn't seem averse to the enticing aroma of lemon and warm Jamaica rum floating through the air.

Mr Strong was watching with an air of cynical amusement from behind the counter.

'Knows how to make an introduction, doesn't he?' he said grudgingly. 'I'll wager half the regiment knows about your father and his punch when he's standing the tavern free drams; let alone most of Setauket-'

'I wish he wouldn't.' Lizzie said, soberly, watching her father's face shine pinkly in the firelight.

'Ay?' For a minute, something like pity flickered in the innkeeper's dark eye. 'Jenneke's another who wishes _her_ father wouldn't…' nodding to the plump girl coaxing her father by the fire. 'But DeJong's a stubborn man. Your father the same?'

Lizzie set her mouth shut. _It's all smoke and mirrors_ , she thought. Thinking it was one thing; complaining to strangers of her father's weakness was _quite_ another.

'No tale-bearer, eh?' Mr Strong finished nonchalantly polishing the pitted wooden counter. 'I can stand you a morsel of supper with the wife, if you like. We don't often have ladies _here_ …and Annie would welcome the company, I'm sure.'

Did he pity her? For a moment, on a swell of pride, Lizzie opened her mouth to refuse - before her stomach answered for her. She hadn't eaten since the all-too-brief breakfast roll that morning. And Mr Strong was _attempting_ to be kind.

Kindness with innkeepers ran all too thin, where Pa was concerned. It would be better to propitiate him. At least for the future.

'Thank you,' she said. 'I'm grateful for your –

'Amos! Mind the bar – and throw out that lout Thompson, would you? He's had enough!' Selah Strong threw down the dirty grey dishcloth and beckoned Lizzie towards a discreet side-door in a narrow passage, where the raucous noise of the inn was more muted. 'Lucky Annie's come down to town with me this week…'

Mrs Strong proved to be a handsome, well-formed woman, with a quick eye and a wealth of dark hair piled up under her cap. She clearly didn't know what to make of her husband bringing a great over-grown girl into their private parlour at first – but a swift, assessing glance was all she needed, before setting another place at table.

She and her husband were both – kind, in a distant way. You could tell that they were small townfolk, from the way they looked her over, as though a new face and figure were a curiosity in itself.

Although Mrs Strong forgot her reserve, and grew quite interested when Lizzie mentioned her father's profession.

'A portrait painter in _Setauket_? I doubt he'll find much business here,' she said, shaking her head. 'Folk are too busy buying their seeds for spring, worrying about corn prices. You don't get many farmers willing to spend good coin on anything like _pictures_ …'

'There's the magistrate, Annie,' pointed out Mr Strong, between a thoughtful puff at his churchwarden pipe. 'Old Woodhull would probably cough up for something. Not the Tallmadges these days; since their boy ran off with the Continentals… but there's a few.'

'Not enough to live on, Selah!' Mrs Strong retorted. 'And _Magistrate_ Woodhull –' she rolled the title out with a disdainful sniff, 'wouldn't give the time of day to a portrait-painter if he thought it might damage his dignity-'

'That may be so,' Lizzie said dispiritedly. Setauket did not at all seem like a likely place. But she tried to remember her father's arguments. 'But – Pa says if you follow the army, you're practically walking on silver…'

As it turns out, she could not have said a worse thing. Silence fell over the Strong tea-table like a stone.

'That so, is it?' Selah Strong was glowering at an invisible enemy on the hearthrug in front of the fire, his dark eyes suddenly alive with smothered resentment. 'Lucky for us then. _Someone_ gets profit from the lobster-backs breathing down our necks…'

'Selah,' Mrs Strong said warningly. She judiciously moved the port-decanter away from his reach. 'We profit from them too, I suppose,' she said, with a quick glance at Lizzie's face. 'They pay for their drink, and spend their wages here-'

'That's what I meant,' Lizzie said, uncomfortable at the turn the conversation was taking. She had the shrewd feeling that the Strongs were not exactly Loyalists. 'We - I mean – Pa paints the officers. Most of them send miniatures home, things like that. And the high-ups like half-length portraits – sometimes even full ones…'

'As victors over the savage natives, I shouldn't wonder,' Mr Strong muttered.

' _Selah_!' Mrs Strong snapped. 'That's _enough_.' She rose. 'I believe my husband is _tired,_ Miss Lowndes. He says things he doesn't mean. And I'm sure you'll be wanting your bed yourself.'

The conversation was most definitely closed.

 _Small town_ , Lizzie thought. _Loose talk_. There was a certain renewed coldness in Mrs Strong's manner that revealed she thought her husband had said too much.

Lizzy rose slowly to her feet and bobbed a prim, frosty little curtsey in return, somewhat offended. But then , of course, she was a stranger to them. They didn't know _what_ she and Pa were.

Politics rather passed Pa by. He followed the money, wherever it called from. Anyone who could pay for a likeness or an allegorical scene could have one. But as His Blessed Majesty's troops seemed to have rather more money in their pockets, his transaction of late had been mostly redcoats and rich Loyalists.

Lizzie's only loyalties were to her father. She had nothing else. And propitiating people on behalf of her father was now second-nature to her.

'Mrs Strong?' she said, taking her by the sleeve. 'My father is a man of discretion. As am I.'

The slight fear in Anna Strong's face did not diminish. She hesitated slightly - enough for Lizzie to finish.

'And my father said –' Lizzie lowered her eyes like a good girl, 'that he'd be _delighted_ to paint your husband and your good self –'

Now where had that come from? The lie had slipped out almost before Lizzie had pause to think. It was true, Mr Lowndes had frequently painted his way out of potential debt. But not _recently_.

'Paint? Us?' The scowl on Selah Strong's face momentarily slipped, to be replaced with an incredulous look. 'What'd your father want to paint us for?'

'We haven't the money-'Mrs Strong began

'Not for money. Not even for the room,' Lizzie said, quickly. 'As a token of… good faith.' And God, where were the lies coming from, Pa wouldn't be painting _anything_ until he was sober…

But, against all the odds, it worked.

Mr Strong glanced at his wife. 'Annie? Would you… like that?'

'Me?' Unconsciously, Mrs Strong reached up to touch an errant lock of hair that had escaped from her cap. Husband and wife stared across the room uncertainly at each other.

'Yes. Yes, I think I would like it,' Mrs Strong said finally, looking taken aback. 'I should like it very much. And it would look well at the big house, Selah – to have a picture there of you…'

'And you!' Mr Strong said eagerly, pushing back his chair. 'I should like to have a picture of you, Annie – looking down on me from the mantelpiece, say. It's a pretty thought…'

The unexpected signs of marital tenderness from the innkeeper discomfited her almost more than the thinly veiled suspicion from moments the slightly stunned expression on Mrs Strong's face, it had surprised _her_ almost as much, too.

Lizzie coughed slightly and looked away in mounting embarrassment.

'I'm sure Pa will oblige – as soon as he can,' she said, carefully inching her way towards the door. 'I'll say goodnight, sir,' she said, hastily whisking her skirts around the edge of the door before anyone had a chance to stop her.

Lizzie cursed in the privacy of her own head, all the way up the rickety stairs, as raucous laughter echoed from the tavern snuggery. Why had she said that? She'd sworn, _not_ again. Not, not again…

But Pa wouldn't stagger up to bed until the brandy punch ran out.

She had time. And she still had the Strongs' faces fresh in her mind from supper. The more portable canvases were kept close to hand, along with sheets of sketch-paper and Pa's worn leather roll. He kept a sharp knife there to sharpen his charcoals.

It might be worth it, if it gained them a little good grace in Setauket.

With a steady hand, she began to trace a long, dark curve on a leaf of foolscap, losing herself in a world of careful lines and sharp pencil-strokes.

 _Smoke_ _and mirrors,_ Lizzie thought, as she opened the battered travelling valise. _It's all smoke and mirrors._


	2. The Mad Dog

_As women yet, who apprehend_  
 _Some sudden cause of causeless fear,_  
 _Although that seeming cause take end,_  
 _And they behold no danger near,_  
 _A shaking through their limbs they find,_  
 _Like leaves saluted by the wind:_

Edmund Waller _, 'On the Discovery of a Lady's Painting'_

* * *

Morning brought with the dawn a pale and irritable Pa, with a querulous tremor in his voice and a slight tremor in his hands. He had slept on a wooden settle downstairs after bidding his fellow-drinkers a merry goodnight, and was full of aches and pains.

It wasn't, perhaps, the best time to broach the subject of a commission to her father; but Lizzie was elated with her success. She had drawn sheet after sheet of fair likenesses. _There_ was Mr Strong's strong brow, and _here_ Mrs Strong's dark eyes – why, she had done _half_ the work for him. All Pa would have needed to do was get out his oils, and Setauket would have been all agog.

But Pa ,alas, was _not_ interested _._

'Rubbish!' he sniffed, twitching aside a charcoal sketch with shaking fingers as he reeled over to his bed. 'What absolute poppycock, propitiating a dirty little grubbing fellow like that! Why, his brandy wasn't worth the money-'

'Keep your voice down!' Lizzie hissed. 'Don't you see, Pa? This is – this is _strategy_. People will hear about it, they'll see you're a man who –'

'-Makes sad little daubs of pasty-faced provincials?'

'Who _honours_ his agreements!' Lizzie snapped, trying not to lose her temper. It was rather hard for Pa to be so fussy. She had already decided she liked the Strongs.

'Oh, don't be such a pettish miss, Bess!' Mr Lowndes said wearily, wincing as he raised one hand to his forehead. 'You don't understand these things, dear. I suppose I can't blame you, but – really, I'm aiming a little higher than _innkeepers_ and their stodgy little wives. I am aiming for _gentility-_ '

'Were the sergeants you were making free with last night so _very_ genteel?'

Infuriatingly, Pa did not take offence at that particular shot. He instead laughed fondly, as though Liz was a child stamping her foot.

'My, what a little scold it is this morning!' he said drowsily, as he dived beneath the covers. 'But see, m'dear, _I_ was the one really playing the strategy game last night. There was a very affable gentleman, Captain Joyce, who _assured_ me of an introduction to the good major. A _most_ agreeable fellow…'

Lizzie said nothing. If Pa's 'strategies' were half as good as he boasted they were, he would certainly have been Royal Court Painter by now – if not redecorating the Sistine Chapel whilst being pelted with roses.

'Unfortunately the poor fellow was rather hard up for silver, so I lent him a trifle,' Pa attempted to wink conspiratorially at her. 'Silver softens up Johnny Redcoat like nothing else, I find! He was _most_ gratified.'

'I'm sure he was,' Lizzie said woodenly.

'Don't look at me like that, child; you don't understand the way the game's played! Commissions require cunning, my dear – cunning and guile. Little bargaining games are no good with _gentlemen._ And as I don't care to deal with anyone _less_ than gentlemanly…'

'Pa-'

'No. You'll have to make my excuses to your precious Strongs, my dear. I'm not sure I care to know them _socially_. Now – if you'll excuse me – I feel a trifle …ugh, unwell…'

And with a toss of the blanket, Mr Lowndes huddled beneath the bed-clothes and was lost to the world.

Silently, Lizzie counted to ten inside her head. It didn't make things any better – but it did give her time to pick up Pa's abandoned portfolio and the scorned sketches before leaving.

'Gently, my dear! Oh, my head…'

She was annoyed enough to slam the door on her way out.

It wasn't _right._ Lizzie was a great believer in things being _right;_ years of trailing after her father had made Elizabeth Lowndes an ardent believer in conviction. Probably because Pa had very few. But…it _wasn't_ right that Pa turned his nose up at people – and good, honest people too. There were a great deal more merchant and trading folk in Setauket than the elusive major, or bloody Captain Joyce – who had clearly sponged off her father with a wink at how he was fiddling the old soak out of his silver… It made Lizzie's blood _boil_ to think of it.

And Pa – knowing her father as well as she did – would simply lord it over his hosts after his flat, discourteous refusal, wearing away any vestige of goodwill, blessedly oblivious to the resentment he would cause as he drank and condescended his way about the place until they were thrown out on their ears. And even then, he would wonder loudly why the 'damned fellow was being so unpardonably rude.'

It may have been necessity that made Lizzie have a sharp eye for a prospective commission, but it was also a genuine desire to give something back. The Strongs had offered her kindness and some little trust. Having Pa snub them wasn't what they deserved.

There was a battered, silvered glass speckled with rust that hung in the narrow passageway. Lizzie glanced in it for a second, tucking a stray wisp of errant hair back behind one ear. She would need her wits about her for this. It would take a cool head to fool Mrs Strong.

This was going to be like that time in Kingston again…

* * *

There had been few redcoats in the tavern when Pa and Lizzie had arrived before – or at least, only a few sullen privates off duty amongst the town's heavier drinkers. Mornings in the Strong Tavern were _quite_ a different matter.

Lizzie could smell the heavy scent of soldier's tobacco from the stairs as she descended. And not just that. There was a confused murmur of rowdy male voices from the snuggery. Evidently the army regulars were occupying the bar counter as matter of course.

'Your ales, gentlemen! Now now, no crowding – Selah! Get Amos to fetch another cask, would you? They've nearly drunk us dry…'

'What about the cold bacon, Miss?'

'Have Cicero slice it, will you?' Selah Strong's voice called. 'They'll not be thinking about food whilst they're calling for their ale. That'll be afterwards…'

To Lizzie's eternal regret, it was at that moment that she unthinkingly pushed open the door – and remembered that this was not York City – nor even Boston, where you had all manner of men and women jostling amicably along-side each other in the bake-houses and cook-shops as well as the taverns. But she had been thinking wistfully of the cold bacon.

Twenty pairs of eyes turned one and all to fix on the whisk of petticoat standing squarely in the middle of the inn parlour. A dozen powdered military heads turned in her direction.

It was as though she had wandered into a barracks and pulled up a chair.

Someone gave a low, appreciative wolf-whistle.

Lizzie's first instinct was to bolt –but Pa's line of work had prepared her for moments like this. _Smoke and mirrors_ , she thought quickly. _Smoke and mirrors_. After her initial pause, she steeled herself to walk forward.

One of Mr Lowndes' patrons in Boston had owned a collection of classical paintings – and one of them depicted 'The Fate of Actaeon'. Most of it had been all agonised posture and leaping hounds, but the goddess Diana in the painting had a cool, 'touch-me-not' smile as she looked on. The smile was belied by the pitiless expression in her eyes.

 _I am Diana,_ Lizzie thought, hardening her stare and trying to adopt the painting's cold smile.

'Why, Mrs Strong!' A florid, fat man with a captain's epaulette on one shoulder got up and made a tipsy bow, his wig slightly askew. 'Is this a lovely sister you've been hiding away?'

'This is a _gentlewoman_ , Captain Joyce,' After a horrified pause, Anna Strong bustled forward in a flurry of indignation, 'And a paying _guest.'_

Lizzie looked again. So this was the good captain who had 'borrowed a trifle' from her father, was it? He _looked_ the sort.

'Only we military men see so little of womankind –to lovely woman, bless 'em!' Captain Joyce raised his glass, to a ragged cheer. 'I meant no disrespect, ma-am – or to you, miss. I presume it _is_ miss?'

'And what business is it -'Mrs Strong began.

'Why - _yes,_ sir,' Lizzie interjected, whilst repressing a quiet smile. She had met men of Captain Joyce's stamp before. Haughty 'Diana' was no longer called for. This needed a... different approach. 'It _is_ Miss. And I was very grateful to hear how you have befriended my father!'

'Y-your father? ' Captain Joyce blinked. 'Eh? Who-'

'Told me how honest and disinterested your friendship was,' Lizzie said, opening her eyes like a trusting child, before dropping them shyly again. 'We have very little money, sir, and few connections – and how we fare in Setauket may make or break us. But my father told me that you volunteered an introduction to your commanding officer – with a view to a commission, too! It is _so_ good to meet a _truly_ good man …' To Captain Joyce's evident discomfort, Lizzie took his hand. ' _Please_ – if there's anything I can do to requite your kindness, sir –'

'Bah!' returned the Captain gruffly, turning turkey-red under the sly grins of his men. 'N-not at all, not at all – the very least I could do…'

His glance was now taking in Miss Lowndes' thrice-patched short jacket with the crewelwork embroidery fraying sadly. And the faded skirt. And Lizzie's wide-eyed, innocent stare. He squirmed, uncomfortably.

'Eh…my duties- if you'll excuse me, madam…'

'Of course, sir!' Lizzie dropped his hand, inwardly triumphing. You might have thought Captain Joyce the blushing maid who had stumbled unawares into a taproom. See how you like _that_ , sir. She bobbed a meek little curtsey in the direction of the rapidly retreating Captain's back –

And encountered an electric-blue stare from the wooden settle in the corner of the room that made her stomach clench.

Amongst polite society, there is a certain level of eye-contact which is acceptable. To look too intently at one person is, between strangers, both unnerving and insulting – and humanity in general appears to understand this.

The man looking Elizabeth over from behind his small glass of Nantz clearly did _not_.

He did not drop his gaze when Lizzie looked up; or when she tried to outmatch his stare, trying to shame him into looking away. She might as well have attempted to outstare a statue dressed in regimentals.

But statues, at least, have blind sightless eyes. There was something a little _less_ than sane in that wide-eyed popping blue stare – like the untutored gaze of a very young child…

Or an animal, Lizzie thought with a shudder. More like an animal. Her small victory over pompous Captain suddenly rang very hollow.

'You'll be wanting breakfast, Miss Lowndes?'

Thank God, Mr Strong had emerged, a scowling knight-errant with a cask tucked under one arm. Grateful for an opportunity of graceful retreat, Lizzie allowed Mrs Strong's gentle hand on her sleeve to steer her out of the room.

To her surprise, there was a broad smile on Mrs Strong's handsome features as she turned from shutting the parlour door 'That _was_ well-played,' she said, admiringly. Suddenly, all half-reserve was completely gone from the innkeeper's wife . She gave Lizzie a grin as though they had been bosom friends from childhood.

'I-It was?' It didn't feel like a success to her.

'I've never seen Captain Joyce dosed with his own medicine before,' Mrs Strong said, suppressing a laugh in her throat, 'Why, it does a heart good to see something like that! He turned tail faster than you could count thruppence!'

'Oh… yes,' Lizzie managed a smile at the memory of pink-faced Captain Joyce scuttling away to his ale. She'd almost forgotten about him under the uncomfortable scrutiny of the officer.

'Mrs Strong, I-'

'Call me Anna,' Mrs Strong suggested. There was a warm, approving twinkle in her eye that said: _you earned it_. 'I tend to avoid the taproom of a morning. Although you seemed to manage very well –'

'I forgot I wasn't in a city inn.' Lizzie confessed. 'It's not thought ill of there.'

'They're well enough, the regiment,' Mrs Strong said confidentially, as she began to set a place at table. 'And they've caused no trouble here with Setauket women. Major Hewlett is _very_ strong on morality; something to be grateful for, I suppose. But I wouldn't answer for breakfasting with the men as a lone woman and a stranger. Get your father by you.'

Lizzie couldn't bear talking of Pa _now._ 'Are the officers _all_ like Captain Joyce?' she asked, tentatively, hoping to turn the conversation.

Mrs Strong snorted. 'There wouldn't be a much of a war if they were! There's better, I grant you – although Corporal Easton's a weasel. Never pays his tab. And the lieutenants are terrible gamblers. They'd steal the shirts off each other's backs if there's no one else to play whist or piquet. But, apart from the dram-drinking and the saucy pamphlets, there's no harm in most of them.'

'Most?' Lizzie thought back to the officer again. 'What about the one by the fire? On the bench?'

'Who do you mean?'

'The pale one?'

' _Him_?' The merriment drained out of Anna Strong's face. 'That'll be Lieutenant Simcoe.' For a moment she was once again the grave, guarded innkeeper's wife. 'There's the odd one… _enjoys_ making trouble. _Likes_ it. He's often in here, with the others.'

'Does he start fights?'

'He _finishes_ them.' Mrs Strong said tightly. 'I don't ever want to see a thing like that again. Your father will do well to steer clear of Simcoe. He's a mad dog.' Her fists had unwittingly bunched in the fabric of her skirt, Lizzie noticed. 'and if he _was_ a dog, I'd have had him shot–'

She broke off abruptly as Selah Strong, looking perplexed, came in from the noise and bustle of the inn.

'Do you ladies know what this is about?' he demanded. 'Only I've just had Captain Joyce give me money "for the poor artist fellow…" '

Anna Strong stared at Lizzie for a moment, and then burst out laughing.

'Now if that isn't a miracle? Getting money out of a redcoat – _and_ Captain Joyce, no less!'

'He owes you money?' Selah said dubiously.

'He _borrowed_ money from my father.' Lizzie said stoutly. ' But I think he was feeling… charitable.'

It wasn't all of it, once they had counted it up. Pa's 'trifle' had been three shillings, and there was now one shilling, an assortment of pennies and an old tinny farthing left. And a horn button.

But Lizzie's appeal to Captain Joyce's conscience had apparently worked. And whilst Selah Strong was not a very demonstrative man when it came to merriment, there was a faint upturn to his mouth once he heard the whole story from his wife.

It was then that Lizzie knew Setauket would be a good place, in spite of Pa and his social snobbery.

She and the Strongs were on different terms now– and somehow, they had become unspoken allies in the face of adversity. It felt _right_ ; something Lizzie had not felt since they had left the Three Cripples.

When Pa eventually rose from his slumbers, he found his daughter frowning abstractedly at a small easel she had propped on the linen press, paintbrush in hand.

'What on earth are you doing, child- are those _my_ oils?'

'They're the old set,' Lizzie said firmly. 'And _I'm_ painting the Strongs, Pa. _You_ don't have to. But they've been very kind-

Mr Lowndes sat up, blanket still tangled around his stockinged-feet.

'Dear me, if you _insist_ …' he said, in a bewildered fashion. He squinted critically at the canvas.

Elizabeth had sketched out a crude facsimile of wooden panelling as background – the better to make the subjects stand out larger than life.

Selah Strong was stood half turned towards the viewer, half turned towards the seated figure of his wife. One hand was on her shoulder. Liz had sketched out that rare expression of tenderness whilst it was still fresh in her mind, and it looked very well painted in. She had also painted in the careful, crisp starched frills of Mrs Strong's cap that shadowed her face. She was not quite yet content with the expression there; somehow Anna Strong looked out cautiously from the portrait with dark, unreadable eyes. She looked as though she was the point of leaping up from her chair.

'That arm is a bit out of proportion, dear, isn't it?'

'I haven't painted in the flesh-tones yet, Pa.'

'I'd add a _little_ more sheen to the folds there in the skirts when you have time, Liz. But – on the whole, quite passable.' Pa sounded surprised. 'Well now. It _wasn't_ a waste of time teaching you after all…'

He grabbed at his waistcoat. 'Is there any chance of breakfast?'

'It's past noon, Pa,' Liz said patiently, frowning at the painted arm. Perhaps it was a _little_ out of proportion. But to move it would disturb the line of the table, and ruin the whole composition…

She sighed, and put down her brush.

'Lunch then, dear?' Pa twinkled at her. 'Come; I shall treat my little prentice to the best Setauket has to offer. We shall have oysters, and porter, and completely disgrace ourselves eating them on the street...'

Lizzie smiled. That was Pa, all over. He could be petty, unreasonable, and infuriating when money was tight, but then he'd _smile_. And Lizzie saw her old Papa again through the drunken stranger; the one who'd let her play with chalks as a very little girl, and who made her and Alexander giggle with his funny stories. For a few hours, it was like having a _real_ father again.

'Why Papa!' Lizzie bobbed a mock-rustic little curtsey and began plucking at her apron-strings, 'Why not? I need a walk. Let's see Setauket!'

* * *

Setauket itself as a town was a huddle of small wooden houses perched defensively on the very edge of the sea. There was something of a harbour; a few jetties where the fisher-folk tied up their boats – and if you squinted through the grey sea-mist you could just make out the dim outline of a huge British supply-ship docked far out at sea. Seen so dimly through the autumn fog, it looked like a ghost-ship looming ominously over the small town.

Lizzie's fingers itched for her sketchbook, left back at the tavern. You couldn't compose scenes like that; sometimes Nature just _gave_ them to you.

 _I'll come back tomorrow_ , she vowed, reluctantly turning away from the view of the bay.

The oysters were very good, with a squeeze of vinegar and a pinch of salt – although Lizzie did have to drag her father away from the scowling stall keeper once he began to expound on the recipe for beef, stout and oyster pie. Pa's culinary interests weren't for everyone – although he did delight in sharing.

'Shall we see the church, m'dear?' Mr Lowndes suggested. 'I am sure that now we have made ourselves known to the military gentlemen, there should be no difficulty in obtaining admittance. After all, I did that pretty little piece of diplomacy with Captain Joyce-'

Lizzie said nothing. She had the remains of the 'diplomacy' tucked securely in a small linen pocket sewn into her stays. She glanced dubiously at the bristling breastworks and sharp stakes planted around the white-painted wooden meeting-house.

'Perhaps,' she suggested tentatively, 'Perhaps, Pa – we should wait for the _captain_ to act for us? A formal introduction would be…' she cast around desperately, for something Pa would listen to. 'It would be more _proper_. And becoming in – in a gentleman, to wait for an introduction to be made…'

'You think so?' Pa sagged, a little disappointed. 'Well. You know best, my dear. I'm sure.' He shivered, glancing up at the grey sky. 'It looks like rain, anyway. I think perhaps some a little warm brandy would do me good…'

Lizzie sighed. The old, good-natured Papa was already gone.

She turned back, wrapping her grey kersey cloak more closely around her as the first few drops of cold rain began to fall.

'Oh, I say – my dear!' Pa gestured with his walking stick towards the distant white spire of Setauket's church. 'Look! I believe we have a diplomatic sortie approaching!'

Sure enough, down the beaten path there marched what looked like a child's notion of a review. A handful of toy soldiers: two men, front and back, and between them, a small figure in a cocked hat with an air of assured dignity.

'I believe, dear,' Pa said, full of glee, 'that the gentleman is Major Hewlett himself!'

'Really?' Lizzie said incredulously. 'He's rather _small_.'

'No rules for officers, dear.' Mr Lowndes looked down with vague affection on his daughter. At five foot five, Lizzie was a comical sight remarking on _height._ She was a little doll of a thing in a hand-me-down cap and her threadbare short jacket. 'Of course, I may possibly… equivocate a little when it comes to painting him. Flattery never does any harm...'

'What if he doesn't _want_ a painting, Pa?'

'Nonsense,' Pa murmured, _sotto voce_. 'Now _quiet_ , Bess. My good sir!' he said, raising his voice in a mellow accent of genial goodwill as the little military party approached. He doffed his hat in an extravagant bow, with a sideways glance at Lizzie – who hastily ducked into a meek little bob herself.

'Are you the portrait-painting gentleman, sirrah?'

Major Hewlett was not, despite his immaculate dress and exquisitely pomaded hair, a particularly imposing man. He was, on close inspection, a little homely under the powdered wig and gold braid – which perhaps explained something of his pompous manner. Reaching up to the full stature of His Majesty's grandeur, Lizzie thought.

'I am indeed, sir,' Mr Lowndes replied heartily. 'Do I have the pleasure of addressing Major Hewlett?

' _Business_ , rather than pleasure, sir.' the major replied, shaking his head. 'I am led to believe that you entered Setauket without presenting your papers?'

Pa took a step back. 'I beg your pardon?'

Lizzie looked up in horror. They _had_ presented papers; to a bored-looking sentry. Why would they have cause to-

And then her gaze snagged on the officer _behind_ Hewlett.

It was the gaunt-looking lieutenant from the tavern. Who, now he was unfolded from a chair, appeared to be a head taller than everyone else. He towered above the little major, directing an evident sneer in the direction of a very flustered Pa.

'I- I can assure you, gentlemen,' Mr Lowndes stammered, 'There was a man posted on the road who we gave all the proper documentation – on my word of honour –'

'I regret to say the soldier claims _otherwise_ , Major.'

Lizzie found herself inwardly surprised by the accents of the formidable Lieutenant Simcoe. For such a tall man, he had a surprisingly high, almost delicate voice. Why, it was the voice of a Latin schoolmaster, mincing over declensions and pronouns! Fastidious to a fault, almost a caricature of a correct gentleman. In other circumstances, Lizzie might have laughed.

But as it was, her blood was up. Pa did not need ridicule and bullying. And if she could help it, there would be none.

The major, she decided at once, would be the easier target. Raising her eyes, and assuming the gentle, slightly appealing glance she had thrown at Captain Joyce, Lizzie took a few timid steps forward, like the good little daughter she was.

'Is there some difficulty, gentlemen?' she asked, uncertainly. 'This must be some mistake; My father _has_ our papers if you need to see them. We had them countersigned…'

'Y-yes, indeed-' Pa stuttered, throwing her a grateful glance. 'In my coat-'

Lizzie almost wished she hadn't spoken; for it meant they all turned their eyes on her. And after their encounter in the inn parlour, Lizzie knew there was precious little chance of shaming the Lieutenant into looking away.

The major, however, made her a neat little bow, as brisk as a robin redbreast hopping on a twig.

'I am sure it is a misunderstanding, madam. However, in such troubled times as these – we cannot be too careful. I am sure you understand our need for caution...'

'Of course!' Mr Lowndes said eagerly, in a sweat of anxiety. 'And if I may be permitted to step upstairs to my room…'

'I think the _lady_ should make the retrieval, Major,' interjected the Lieutenant sharply. ' _If_ you please.'

'Well, I hardly think we need be _quite_ so strict here, Lieutenant…' began the little major, darting a look of disapproval over one epauletted shoulder.

'But you said so yourself, Major. In times such as these, there is _every_ need for caution.'

Was that a note of mockery in Lieutenant Simcoe's voice? His face was perfectly solemn as he threw the major's own words back to him, turning that electric-blue stare squarely in his superior's face.

Hewlett's indecision showed in his eyes. To protest on Mr Lowndes' part would show weakness – and on his own ground, no less! To acquiesce was insufferably discourteous; but it was the only way forward.

'If you _wouldn't_ mind, miss?' he said stiffly, casting a look of evident dislike upon his lieutenant.

'As Simcoe is so _very_ zealous -'

Lizzie didn't need asking twice. She turned and hurried away with a dignified little patter of feet – only breaking into an undignified run once she was past the threshold.

God, this was the _last_ thing they needed. Pa had never quite caused a scandal – although he had frequently spent the night cooling his heels with other roisterers if he found drinking companions. Lizzie always kept a supply of money sewn up into her bodice for emergencies like that. But military men…and Pa…

 _Enjoys_ making trouble, Mrs Strong had said. _Likes_ it…

Fortunately, Pa's papers (crumpled letters of introduction, commendations, and a bill for breakfast and a glass of port) were not very numerous. Lizzie easily found their permits– and, to her infinite relief, with the right countersignature allowing them to cross into Setauket.

Just _try_ making trouble now, Lizzie thought grimly, as she hurtled down the creaking stairs.

Fortunately, Pa had recovered his composure enough to attempt a little light artistic conversation with Major Hewlett; although Lizzie saw his glance creep furtively sideways from time to time. He had clearly been counting the seconds in agony until she returned.

'Here!' she announced brightly. 'I _knew_ we had them!'

She proffered the papers, gently, with a small dip of her skirts towards the major.

' _Well_ , Lieutenant?' Major Hewlett snapped. ' _Are_ they in order?'

A black-gloved hand pulled the sheaf of thick paper from her hands. Lizzie quickly snatched her fingers away – she did not care to prolong _any_ meeting with Mrs Strong's 'mad dog'.

The 'mad dog', on the other hand, seemed to take a calm enjoyment in nettling the little major. He turned - maddeningly -through every page, peering at the writing with a theatrical air of enquiry.

'Why, so they are.' he said, with an air of mock-surprise. 'Who would have credited it? How very… _sloppy_ of Private Perkins, not to have remembered that. I shall really have to reprove him.'

'Your enthusiasm is to be commended, Lieutenant, but there's really no need,' Hewlett said stiffly – before turning with an apologetic air towards the stupefied Mr Lowndes. 'My most sincere apologies, sir – and – as I was saying – I do believe I would appreciate a little… ahem –'

He coughed, delicately. Was that _embarrassment,_ Lizziewondered? 'Er - Perhaps your young lady had better go inside, sir? The weather is inclement.'

 _Ah._ _Nudes_ , thought Lizzie resignedly, adjusting her cloak. It was probably nudes that the little major wanted . Pa did a furtive trade, under the rose as it were, of classical daubs nominally called 'Hylas and the Nymphs', say, or the 'Judgement of Paris'(and occasionally, for certain aesthetically inclined gentleman, certain heroic friendships in which women were mysteriously absent). It was culture – or at least an excuse to look at groups of pretty women with no clothes on in the guise of classical literature. They paid very well, so Lizzie hardly minded. Oh well. Thank goodness for that…

But as she turned to step inside, an iron scarlet-clad arm stopped her path.

Lizzie stared upwards, alarmed. She had to; the 'mad dog' was head and shoulders above her, and holding out the damned papers, with an offensive little gentleman's smirk towards a lady and an inferior. He probably thought that was _winning,_ Lizzie thought with disgust.

It took some effort, but Lizzie managed to extend a hand and take the crackling bits of official paper from him.

'Thank you,' she said, her voice shaking. Why did it sound like she was _afraid?_

 _I'm not afraid, I'm_ _ **not**_ _…_

For a moment, his arm still barred her path; but then – thank God! - it dropped. Mercifully, he stepped back and made a very slight bow in her direction.

'Miss _Lowndes_ , isn't it?'

He took the trouble to pronounce her name slowly - as if he hadn't just deliberately read her name, age, birthplace and profession all written down in neat clerk's hand!

It was about all Lizzie could stand. Making a short nod, she fled as quickly as bare civility would let her into the inn like a rabbit to its bolthole.

Mrs Strong was waiting inside the door of the private parlour. One look at Lizzie's angry, mutinous eyes and flushed face was enough.

'Yes,' she said simply. 'That how he always makes _me_ feel, too.' The fellow-feeling in her voice was enough. 'Drink? I find _I_ need something to take the foul taste away...'

'If he tries anything with Pa –' Lizzie said, in a voice choked with rage. 'I'll-'

'Hush now!' Mrs Strong put a hand on her arm. 'Leave that. It does no good to think _that_ way.' She sighed. 'That'll probably do, anyway. It's a power game with the army. They like to mark their territory, like dogs. They'll more than likely leave you alone, now-'

'I think Papa's discussing a commission with Major Hewlett,' Lizzie said, slowly unclenching her fists. 'So… there was some good. I suppose.' She shook her head, calming down. 'I just felt so _angry…'_

When Mrs Strong looked up, her angular, beautiful face was full of bitterness.

'Aren't we _all_.' She said briefly. 'Some families _here_ think-'

But whatever Setauket families thought had to wait. In a gust of wind and rain Pa blew in, a little colour returning to his pale cheeks in the warmth of the inn.

'Pa!' Lizzie shot to her feet. 'Are you alright?' she dropped her voice. 'Did the major request anything… classical?'

'Classics be damned,' Mr Lowndes grumbled, shaking his wet cloak onto the newly scrubbed floor. 'Damned odd – the fellow was so secretive about it I couldn't make out _what_ he was asking, at first. Probably that long whey-face streak of piss, putting him off…' He broke off, looking a little affronted.

'Your high-ranking major only wants me to paint a picture of his damn _horse_!'

Lizzie couldn't help it. After all the tension, just a moment before – and the sight of Pa's baffled, pompous face - she burst into an outrageous fit of whooping laughter. It wasn't ladylike – but it brought a smile to Pa's face, even whilst he reached for a glass of brandy over the counter.

'I don't see what there is to laugh about, you mocking little ninny,' he grumbled. 'Horses are a plaguy difficult thing to paint unless you specialise. But there'll be ten guineas down for it, if I don't addle the foreshortening...'

Mrs Strong nearly dropped the flask of brandy in her shock.

'For a _painting_?'

'And I have two as a little deposit!' Pa dropped the gold on the counter, making the metal sing. 'I think this calls for a toast, don't you – to the gold of his Blessed Majesty George the Third, Lord love him! And long may he continue to make enough gold pieces for us all!'


	3. If Wishes Were Horses

_Let Observation with extensive View,  
Survey Mankind, from __China_ _to_ _Peru_ _;  
Remark each anxious Toil, each eager Strife,  
And watch the busy Scenes of crowded Life;  
Then say how Hope and Fear, Desire and Hate,  
O'er spread with Snares the clouded Maze of Fate._

Dr Johnson, _The Vanity of Human Wishes_

King George's guineas produced a great effect on the Lowndes family. It put Mr Lowndes in such a good mood that it entirely erased the unpleasant memory of his almost-arrest – and had Setauket had such things, Pa would have spent his precious two guineas in a haze of munificence on port-wine and cocked hats and all manner of fripperies.

' _No! No_ port wine,' Lizzie said sharply. Her small face suddenly showed much more strain under the turn of good fortune than Mrs Strong would have believed possible. On the contrary, her face suddenly looked braced and set, as though facing some unpleasant task. 'Pa – when does he _want_ the portrait?'

'Eh? Well, I didn't enter into specifics, my dear –' Mr Lowndes said vaguely. 'I _had_ thought it might be a nice Michaelmas gift…'

' _Michaelmas_?' Lizzie pushed back her chair, appalled. 'That's a _month_! You never promised the major a full-length portrait on horseback for Michaelmas, did you? Please tell me you didn't, Pa!'

There was a ragged note of pleading in her voice.

'I don't believe I promised, in so many words…' Mr Lowndes said vaguely. 'Although I may have _hinted_ that –'

' _Hinted_!' Lizzie stared flatly at her father. 'Pa – if I were a man, I would box your _ears_.'

Mr Lowndes looked flabbergasted. His eyes popped slightly with indignation. 'Bess! That is most uncalled for-'

'Is it? Is it _really_ , Pa? When's the last time you painted something like this?!' The small painter's daughter was quivering with rage. Her curls were almost standing out from her face, Anna noticed. Like an enraged porcupine. 'There hasn't been a commission like this since Mr Addison, at least! And you talk about a _month_! And horses! _Horses_! –'

A sullen silence fell between father and daughter. Mr Lowndes had turned out his bottom lip, looking like a sulky, balding baby huddled in his corner by the fire. Lizzie had turned her face down to glower at the hearth, her jaw set sharp.

'So…' Anna said briskly, affecting not to notice the chill in the atmosphere. 'You'll be staying a month, then, at least?'

'At _least,'_ Lizzie snarled, folding her arms. 'God in _heaven_ , Pa…'

'Well then,' Mrs Strong said firmly, 'That would be, hmm - ten shillings with meals.' She held out her hand. 'In _advance_ , please, Mr Bartholomew. As I know you'll be quite… _busy_ ,'

Wordlessly, Pa handed over the sagging cambric purse, his face black with displeasure.

'I suppose some brandy-punch is out of the question?'

Anna Strong looked at him over the bar. She was smaller than Mr Lowndes, but she stared him down, black eyes stern.

' _No_ , sir. I think… _not_.'

'I _must_ say,' Bartholomew Lowndes swelled like an enraged toad, outrage overcoming his sense of dignity. 'that _this_ – this is all a vicious women's cabal of vapourings and – and _sentiment_! A pretty state of affairs, when a man of respectabilitation can't even have a drink to celebrate a most –most fortunate -day. Bess – I am _most_ disappointed in you.'

And with that father's curse delivered over the banisters, a growling Pa retreated to his room, to gnaw over his wrongs with a private bottle of sherry.

'I'm sorry,' Lizzie said mechanically, as soon as her father was gone.

'Really?' Mrs Strong raised an eyebrow. 'No need. That's hardly the worst insult I've heard in a tavern.' She snorted. 'Vicious women's cabal, indeed!'

'He doesn't know what he's _asking_ ,' Lizzie said, almost to herself, as Mrs Strong took a companiable seat beside her. 'A month! That's no _time_ …'

'What if you called it two?'

'Two?' Lizzie calculated. Say Pa stayed off the bottle – say his hand was firm and his eye true… 'If the under painting went well… maybe.' It _could_ be done. 'But the major will never wait-'

'If he fancies your father as an artist, he will.' Anna said, pouring out a measure of small ale with a generous hand. She pushed the mug over to Lizzie, who drank it down gratefully. 'Besides, there isn't much in Setauket to occupy a man besides the liquor; unless he takes a shine to fishing,'

She handed Lizzie the sagging purse back. 'Keep your purse-strings tight, Miss Lizzie – or is it Bess? I've heard your father call you both.'

'Pa only calls me Bess when he's cross with me,' Lizzie said soberly. 'Thank you. For helping –'

'Not at all.' Anna Strong said gently. She felt a strong twinge of sympathy for the girl in her hand-me-down cap and frayed jacket. She'd been like that once herself. She recognised that baffled frustration. 'And you can call me Anna, Lizzie. I think, between us, we can manage your father.'

Despite the obstinate silence when she knocked on Pa's door to wish him goodnight, Lizzie went to her bed that night in a curious, hopeful mood. There was something here to _build_ on in Setauket. Who knew? Perhaps with Mrs Strong's help, she could wean her father from the bottle. Perhaps he'd begin painting in earnest again, with a proper commission on hand. Perhaps…

Counting her tentative hopes as though they were obedient sheep, Lizzie ruffled up her hair and curled into her lumpy blankets. Setauket was going to be _different_. She could feel it.

* * *

An artist's eye must necessarily be sharp; in order to capture the essence of a moment. Perhaps those who sketch from life simply train their observation to be sharper and a little keener than the average man, but within three days of lodging at the Strong Tavern, there were already some things that hadn't gone unnoticed by Lizzie – who took cautious soundings of Setauket society.

Major Hewlett, their new-found patron, was a 'bloody martinet' according to gossip from the regiment, and in person a neat, fussy little man rather particular about his cuffs and starches. Lizzie's first impression of him as a robin redbreast never entirely went away. Perhaps it was the eyes; Hewlett always had one sharp, bright little dark eye on _something_ – whether it was raising the breastworks around his encampment on the church's hill, or having a full drill parade every Sunday. He was very neat, extremely punctilious, and universally polite – but Lizzie somehow had the impression he was playing "soldiers" like an earnest schoolboy crouched on the hearthrug with painted wooden soldiers at his command. The Continental army was probably not going to complain if they found a private without his stock, or with specks of dust on his cocked hat.

But on the other hand, there was something rather touching about a man who was so earnest over small things.

His horse, for example.

Bucephalus was a grave, placid grey who towered above his small master , stabled rather incongruously in a makeshift stall made out of broken-up old pews and meeting-house benches. He whinnied pleasantly over Hewlett's shoulder as the major wrote his dispatches, nibbled affectionately at his master's epaulettes when feeling neglected, and all in all was probably the most cosseted horse in the Province.

Pa didn't know where to look at the first sitting.

'This is the beast?' he said dubiously, sketchbook in hand. Pa was not fond of horses, whether painting them or approaching them, although he did his best to assume some interest. 'A fine specimen, to be sure, Major…'

'Beast?!' Major Hewlett looked indignant. He laid a protective hand on Bucephalus' pink muzzle. 'Bucephalus is no mere beast, sir! A horse, Mr Lowndes, is a man's constant companion through the vicissitudes of war where both depend on the other for survival…'

Bucephalus snorted.

'There, good boy,' Hewlett said abstractedly, proffering a piece of apple. 'I was thinking, Mr Lowndes, perhaps a _caracole_? Bucephalus rearing , with me seated?

'An equestrian portrait?' Pa blenched beneath the brim of his hat. 'In the er, grand heroic mode, Major?'

Lizzie, who had been dutifully following behind her father with his sketchbook, paints and a basket of lunchtime provisions in tow, tried to imagine tiny little Major Hewlett astride a rearing Bucephalus and failed. It would be _traditional_ , certainly.

But…

Lizzie thought back to the soft green slope outside, with the sea stretching outwards in a long blue line, the woods tracing the shoreline like a dark velvet ribbon. And she thought of the usual flat backdrops for equestrian portraits. Dull backgrounds.

'What about…outside?' she ventured. 'On the hill?'

'The hill?' the Major broke off to stare at her.

'Overlooking the bay? And – if I may, sir,' Lizzie gently gathered up a slice of apple and offered it, palm flat, to the horse . 'I think that Bucephalus deserves better than a _usual_ portrait. My father has an idea…'

The idea had been Lizzie's devising, early in the hours of the morning. The portrait would be three-quarters rather than a full canvas – a much better size for an officer to take about with his luggage. There would be a hint of blue Atlantic in the background, a gentle curve of the sea – and to the fore, Bucephalus, unsaddled and glossy. The Major would stand to one side in his glorious regimentals, one hand on his bridle ; the perfect picture of man and his constant companion in quiet communion.

The little Major's face brightened as he heard the description of his budding painting.

'What a novel idea, Mr Lowndes!' he said, taking Pa confidentially by the arm. 'And how appropriate, to include Setauket itself – a true _colonial_ painting, through and through…'

Doubtless the major meant to be kind; although 'colonial 'sounded faintly condescending to Lizzie's ear. But Major Hewlett was already waxing enthusiastic.

'I don't suppose we could have the company colours of the regiment draping the scene? Upon my word, I think it would look very well against the green…'

'I'm sure, major…' Pa said dazedly, being tugged away by one arm towards the furled company colours. He darted a parting glare at Lizzie as though to say, what _have_ you got me into?

'Smacks a little of idolatry, doesn't it?' a soft voice said behind her.

Lizzie froze.

Pale Lieutenant Simcoe had somehow insinuated himself softly into the meeting house. Lizzie hadn't even heard the tread of footsteps on the floor; he might as well have slithered in from a crack in the floorboards. But his tone was almost conversational – and thankfully, his eyes were resting on Bucephalus with more than a hint of distaste.

'Idolatry?'

'That horse of Hewlett's,' Simcoe remarked, with an idle flick of his fingers towards the stables. 'He has three, did you know? But only Bucephalus is the favoured one. Man's a fool.' There was a note of veiled contempt in his voice. 'Call the beast Incitatus and have done.'

That's a little hard, surely!' Lizzie protested. Major Edmund Hewlett might be many things, but he certainly was no Caligula.

Still. When not forced to look directly at the waxen lieutenant, conversation seemed almost possible. 'Do you not like horses yourself, Lieutenant?'

But alas, asking that small question drew Simcoe's attention. That wide-eyed, strangely blank stare turned down towards Lizzie.

'Horseflesh is horseflesh,' he said briefly.

Lizzie lowered her eyes again. _Serves you right for trying to talk_ , she scolded herself. The conversation had juddered to a halt – and with that parting remark on horseflesh, Lizzie wasn't at all sure she wanted to renew the conversation.

But, bizarrely, Simcoe didn't seem to feel he'd killed any attempt at conviviality. He carried on as though making the mildest small-talk imaginable.

'I suppose you see a good deal, in your father's line of work?'

'Of what, sir?' Lizzie was floundering.

'Horses?' And then, as Lizzie was trying to find a polite reply, he added, very softly, '…and flesh, of course.'

This was **intolerable**.

Lizzie started up, cheeks scarlet with fury.

'You are _offensive_ , sir!' she said, in a fierce whisper, darting a glance towards the Major and her father – still deep in involved discussion over the regiment colours. 'And I might _remind_ you, if any sense of – of common _decency_ does not-' she spat the words out like musket balls, ' That Major Hewlett is a man of the strictest morals, and one _word_ to him or my father …'

To her considerable surprise, Simcoe looked genuinely perplexed by her display of temper . Seeing it, Lizzie almost lost sight of her anger. She was used to the boorish sallies of inn-parlour wits, but such genuine, open bafflement took the wind out of her sails. That colourless face of his clearly said, plain as day, _how on earth have I offended?_

But then that customary smoothness of manner took over, and Lizzie's dislike returned all at once.

'I meant no impertinence –'

' _Didn't_ you?' Lizzie said grimly, frantically trying to catch her father's eye. Damn it, Pa had his back turned – and Major Hewlett was now waxing enthusiastic on the _Iliad_ 's description of the horses of Achilles. She was caught. No chance of help. 'Would you address such language, sir, to a sister?'

'I have none,' Simcoe remarked calmly. 'So I hardly know. But if I _did_ offend –'

'-Which you _did_ -'

'… then I _heartily_ crave your pardon.'

In the face of that cool glacial politeness, Lizzie felt rather like a spoilt child stamping her foot – flushed and undignified. Worse yet, the lieutenant proffered one elegant black-gloved hand; possibly the most passive-aggressive tactic in the art of apology.

Lizzie thought fast. To run shrieking to Pa would cause a scene and mean the end of their new-found peace. To accept made her seem timid; worse, as though the insinuation were nothing.

'I don't know what other artists may do,' she said stiffly, ignoring the outstretched hand, 'But my father is no libertine, sir, and _I_ am no York City drab . I am a _gentlewoman_.'

'I am pleased to hear it,' Lieutenant Simcoe said tranquilly. 'As Major Hewlett is a man of the _strictest_ morals…'

The major and Pa had taken their turn about the room, and were now eagerly swapping morsels of verse.

'- Yes, indeed, descended from Poseidon's own! Quite right, Mr Lowndes. You are a man who knows his Homer?'

'Myself, and my daughter, sir,' Pa said, with an elaborate bow. 'My Elizabeth has such slight education as I can afford, but she takes to it with ardour, Sir. With ardour. Aren't we all mere acolytes at the feet of the Muse of Art?'

Lizzie winced, slightly. Pa was overdoing it.

'And quite right too, sir!' Lieutenant Simcoe raised his voice, daintily elbowing his way into the conversation . 'Although we can't _all_ sit at the feet of Pallas Athene.'

'Eh?' Pa looked nonplussed, and then nodded, hastily. 'Quite right, quite right…very, er, demanding Muse…'

There was a long, embarrassed silence. There was the trace of a derisive smile on Simcoe's lean countenance. Clearly he had taken the full sum of Pa's 'classical education'.

'That would be the _goddess_ , father,' Lizzie said hastily. 'Would you like your drawing pencils?'

* * *

It was an awkward sitting. Pa sat on a camp stool outside, trembling a little as he put his hand to paper. Major Hewlett assumed a noble 'communing with nature' pose next to Bucephalus – although the effect was slightly spoilt by the wind, which blew his hat over one eye.

Lizzie sat to one side, diligently sketching. Pa was right. Horses _were_ hard. It was the way the muscles bunched under the skin…

Lizzie was so absorbed in her task, she didn't noticed that the colourless Lieutenant Simcoe was still watching both her and her father; and with an observant eye that would have done credit to any artist.

'Lieutenant? _Lieutenant_!'

Lizzie awoke as if from a dream, only half-content with her sketch of Bucephalus, to the Major's abrupt bark.

'I'm sure Captain Joyce will _want_ those dispatches today, Simcoe? They're on my desk.'

Lizzie caught something that was almost a _snarl_ twitching across the lieutenant's face as he turned on his heel. There appeared to be little love lost between the "mad dog" and his master.

'Can't say I particularly _like_ the fellow,' Hewlett said uneasily, casting a half-apologetic glance in his artist's direction. 'As a gentleman, you understand? He's perfectly correct as an officer. But he does rather _sneer_. I can't abide a sneering man, myself.'

Pa ahem-ed, politely. 'Er – I believe your horse is trying to eat your sleeve, Major…'

Seeing Major Hewlett coaxing Bucephalus into position with affectionate little 'tsks'; _that_ was something she wouldn't have missed for the _world_. Lizzie discreetly sketched some of the less than heroic moments down the side of her page, and found herself enjoying them much more than a stiff figure of allegory. Hewlett would clearly have sacrificed half the cambric shirts he owned for Bucephalus.

By that time the sitting was over, and Lizzie's stick of charcoal worn down to a short stump.

'I think that went well, don't you?' she said merrily, as they trooped down the steep incline of the hill. 'The Major's a pleasant gentleman.'

Pa looked oddly dispirited. He looked glumly down at his leather portfolio. 'Hmm? Oh, yes. Quite agreeable, indeed…Yes.'

'Pa?' Lizzie looked at him. Pa had never sounded so weary after a sitting with a client before… 'What's wrong?'

'Eh? Oh –nothing.' Pa looked away, avoiding her concern. 'I just didn't feel the creative juices _flowing_ this time, that's all… can't say I'm really that, eh, satisfied.'

'Did you not like the way your sketches turned out? That's what sittings are _for,_ Pa _._ ' Lizzie said encouragingly. _'_ No-one gets it right the first time. You say so yourself!'

'I do, don't I,' Pa said abstractedly. 'You know, I think I may be in need of a little liquid refreshment after my labours, Lizzie?'

' _No_.' Lizzie said flatly.

'Not even one glass? To steel me for my great task?'

'You know you don't stop at _one_ ,' Lizzie said darkly.

' Please, Lizzie…' Pa was almost wheedling, like a child begging for sweets. 'How about an ale, then? Penny ale, to wet my whistle?'

Fortunately Lizzie had a few loose coppers in her cloak pocket. She wouldn't have trusted Pa with the purse after his brandy punch spree. He pulled a gargoyle-face at the fact she had just handed him a penny.

'I don't suppose a little more –'

' _No_ , Pa.' Lizzie said sternly, picking up the pace in case he decided to protest. ' _Not_ this time. We're going to _work_ in Setauket.'

* * *

And work they did.

For the first week, Setauket society danced around the newcomers with hesitant step. Artists were surely not entirely _respectable,_ and wanderers are always looked on with suspicion in small, out of the way places. Had Pa been less of a showman with his faded gentleman's manners and graces, the rest of town society would have quickly tired of 'that painter fellow'. But Pa's munificence (and the tale of the brandy punch) was an instant charm, and his countless anecdotes of famous and titled people he had painted or sketched was like an expert thief wielding a lock pick; he simply _insinuated_ his way in. The farming gentlemen liked the saucy tales of his misspent youth in New York.

But it must be said that apart from the Strongs, the families with a more liberal bent declined to make acquaintance with 'the reprobate picture-painter'. Old Mrs Tallmadge, stiff and stately in her Sunday brocades, did not even deign to see Mr Lowndes' courteous bow in the street.

That didn't do Mr Lowndes any harm with the Loyalist families; in fact, it rather worked in his favour. By reason of his patronage by Major Hewlett, Pa gleaned an invitation to the Major's quarters – a house some few miles distant from Setauket proper. Whitehall was apparently the local magistrate's seat, and suited the gravity of command much better than town lodgings.

'Trust old Dick Woodhull to feather _his_ nest,' Selah Strong said with disgust. 'Keeping in with the Major makes life pretty comfortable for _him_ , doesn't it? Sitting there with his fancy French furniture in his _gentleman'_ s library–'

Gossip was a frequent feature of the Strong's sittings for their portrait; and in the pale painted wainscoted dining room of Strong Manor, Lizzie had to admit, she was very much at home. The Strongs had taken up Miss Lowndes whole-heartedly, and Lizzie was profoundly grateful for it.

But she saw Anna Strong flinch, slightly, at her husband's mention of the name 'Woodhull'. It was only a moment – but she dropped her eyes, and bent her head slightly, as if her best lace-trimmed cap was suddenly too heavy for her head.

'How is it your father isn't _here_ doing the painting, any way?' Mr Strong said suspiciously, tugging at his neck-cloth with an uncomfortable air. 'Seems like _you're_ doing most of the work…'

'Broadly true,' Lizzie agreed cheerfully. She had long since prepared a ready answer for this; and she was now almost word-perfect. 'He's the master-painter. I merely paint the background.' She picked up a fine horsehair brush. Now if she spread white paint, very thinly, just over that line of the skirt, that would give just the right lustre to Mrs Strong's charcoal silk... 'Pa always calls me the acolyte. _He_ 's the high priest. Once my daubings are done, Pa will give it the master touches, and – phew!' Lizzie blew out her cheeks. 'That's _his_ talent.'

'Oh.' Mr Strong appeared satisfied. He looked down fondly at his wife in her Sunday best, one hand gently squeezing her shoulder. 'That's something, isn't it?'

Mr Strong reached up – after a second's hesitation – to take his hand. But it was a conscious effort, Lizzie saw. The wary look Lizzie hadn't managed to entirely erase from the painting told the tale more truly.

Mrs Strong was _fond_ of her husband, true enough. She liked him; respected him, feared for him – and even took a gentle proprietorial way of seeing to his comforts that brought waves of tenderness to Selah Strong's eyes. But love? No. _That's too much_ , Mrs Strong's eyes said. _Don't ask for something I can't give._

The real tragedy seemed to be that Selah was hopelessly and passionately in love with his wife – although he overshadowed her with his ideas of 'what was done'. Far more than Anna really liked, Lizzie suspected. Anna Strong was intelligent, sharp, and decisive. She hardly needed shepherding by a careful husband.

Husbands were generally out of love with their wives in books; it was peculiar indeed to find a wife out of love with a husband neither old nor brutal (it must be added that Lizzie had no more idea of marriage than a fish, but she had her opinions). But perhaps he was not her first husband.

Besides – Mrs Strong _already_ knew Lizzie's secret.

'Your father's not been _near_ that portrait, has he?' she said bluntly; once Selah had taken leave to look after his fields.

'I-'

Lizzie looked up, panic-stricken.

'I'm not stupid, Miss Elizabeth.' Mrs Strong walked squarely up to the painting, looking at the wet oils still gleaming on the painted surface. 'You think I don't _know_? I own that tavern. My servants clean up the dirty rags you clean your brushes with. They also clean up after your father in the parlour. And they know who is _where_ , and when.'

There wasn't a trace of accusation or censure in her voice. 'How long have you been helpin _g_ him paint?'

Lizzie gave up all thoughts of excuses or lies. That wouldn't work with Mrs Strong.

'Just… this one,' she said, reluctantly.

'This picture? Of me and Selah? That's _all_ you?' Anna took a step back, eying the other Mrs Strong in the picture. It was a good likeness. Better than some of the flat old things at Master DeJong's, with blank-eyed family children with podgy necks. 'It's remarkably fine for a first painting.'

Lizzie looked down at her shoes.

'Pa does well,' she said stoutly. 'No man better. He's a _good_ painter. He just needs…help, sometimes.'

'And you don't mind giving it?'

'He's my father,' Lizzie said quietly – and the way she said it made Mrs Strong momentarily touch her arm, kindly. 'We get by.'

She hesitated. 'Does Mr Strong know – that I-?'

'Selah?' Mrs Strong stood up, smoothing her skirts. 'Bless you, Selah's a _man._ Of _cours_ e he doesn't know.' She smiled, a wry light shining in her dark eyes. 'I've told enough lies myself to know. We women do what we can to survive and we - _humour_ men's fancies.' She broke off, looking a little pensive. 'They have peculiar fancies about women's dignity, don't they? Men? Selah fancies I should keep myself to being a lady up here at the house, rather than involve myself with the tavern...'

'Do you want to?' Lizzie asked, tentatively.

Anna Strong looked around at her fine parlour; the sunlight streaming through the windows, the trees lining the approach to the house – and shook her head, vehemently.

'Sit up here like a fine lady, doing embroidery and pretending there's _nothing_ out there? Not I.'

What must it be like, always on the move, with no friends? Anna wondered, looking at the pale, anxious face of the painter's daughter. Granted, friends were fewer in Loyalist Setauket these days – but there had been friends once.

 _And sweethearts..._

Anna winced, inwardly, shying away from that painful thought.

'Well,' she said. 'As long as you don't _mind_ being an - acolyte, was it? But…' she found herself suddenly curious. 'Did you never … _want_ to leave your father?'

'Leave _Pa_?' Lizzie sounded faintly incredulous. ' _Why_?'

'There's a lot of world out there, Miss Lizzie,' Anna said, still looking thoughtfully at the painting. 'Friends, neighbours, family. Not all of it has to be cleaning up after your father, you know. Times are changing…'

'Not for us,' Lizzie said tightly. She suddenly felt horribly guilty ; as though she'd been disloyal to Pa, somehow. She threw her brushes down with a quick decisive little movement.

'I'm glad you're pleased with the painting,' she said, firmly closing the subject. 'But I think I really _must_ be going…'

Mrs Strong suddenly looked repentant. After all, it wasn't her place to question the girl's loyalties. _But I'd have run away with a sweetheart before I'd reached eighteen, living with an old trout like that,_ she thought privately. What did the girl _really_ want? Surely not to keep following her father, as he reeled from one gin-shop to the next…

* * *

Why do people _always_ ask that, Lizzie thought crossly to herself, as she walked down the road from Strong Manor, cloak fluttering in the wind. She was angry with herself; angry for letting Mrs Strong see that Pa needed… help, and doubly angry that she _did_ want something more than down-at-heel lodgings and last-minute miracles.

Back during a flush of good fortune staying in Brighton, Alexander had caught a head-cold, and been confined to bed for two weeks. Pa had bought himself a battered second-hand bundle of quarto volumes of poetry. There had been some Dryden, a mix of essays by Pope and Johnson, a large moth-eaten schoolboy copy of the Odyssey, and - treasure of treasures! – the poetical works of Edmund Waller. Pa had discarded it as sentimental rubbish, preferring to mark the _Odyssey's_ few engravings for future subjects.

Lizzie had taken up the poetry for reading to Alexander. Alex had then lent her some sonnets a defaulting lodger had left behind – and the rest was a foregone conclusion.

There was nothing particularly sacred about devotion to Art, Lizzie knew full well from experience. But occasionally, when they'd left a lodging house in a hurry - Pa with dirty stockings tied about his neck so he didn't lose them -it was nice to think that somewhere there was a courtly place where handsome gentlemen wrote 'Odes to Sweet Chloris' or 'On Belinda's Eyes'. Alexander had told her gentlemen's colleges were supposed to be like that, amongst all the Latin and Greek.

Sometimes, Lizzie could see a sweet little scene in her mind's eye; Pa, commissioned to make a portrait of a handsome young gentleman with sweet dark eyes and a melancholic disposition - who would become instantly smitten with his 'sweetest Elizabeth' and write acres of poetry in her honour. After one or two touching sentimental scenes (Lizzie had read Fanny Burney's _Evelina_ several times) where she protested her devotion in the painted setting of a rose-garden, the young gentleman earnestly besought Pa's blessing with tears in his eyes and 'much rejoicing'.

The gentleman himself was a mixture of a stage Hamlet she had once seen on the boards of a theatre and a rather good-looking pot-boy at the Three Cripples, and no foundation in reality. The sober truth was that Lizzie's romantic experience had extended to the odd catcall in taverns, and a wink from the good-looking pot-boy – which had shattered her ideals. Heroic gentlemen certainly didn't _wink._

Lizzie didn't have many illusions. But the poetic gentleman was one of them, and something that kept her happy moving about New England. Maybe not _now_. But next time – next town, next place - there could be a heroic gentleman macaroni with dark eyes .

Hope springs eternal, and it is no different for the daughters of painters than for the heroines of novels. All it really needed, Lizzie thought, was the _right_ set of circumstances…

It was almost tragically ironic that this was, in fact, true. Just not in a way Elizabeth would have chosen for herself…


	4. The Oppressed Oppressing

_Thou, like the world, th' oppress'd oppressing,  
Thy smiles increase the wretch's woe:  
And he who wants each other blessing  
In thee must ever find a foe._

Oliver Goldsmith, _Memory_

The gallant equestrian commission proved a bundle of mixed blessing for the Lowndes family. daughter. On one hand, Mr Lowndes, faced with the stern alliance of both his daughter and his landlady, had subsided into sullen compliance about his dram-drinking. Ten guineas is not a figure to be sneezed at, and a man needs both a steady hand and a clear eye for portrait-painting; especially a portrait of this magnitude. Without the distractions of rum punch, Pa rolled up his sleeves and took sketch after sketch of the noble Bucephalus as though his life depended on it.

But his temper soured noticeably; which was _most_ unlike Pa. Granted, the last large painting he had done of this size had been of Mr Addison, more than a year and a half ago; but there had been plenty of work in between, even if it was only mottoes and grapevines for inn-signs. But Lizzie doubted that her father had ever fretted quite so much over a client as he worried at the noble Bucephalus.

When he came to painting, the paints were badly mixed. When sketching, Pa's pencils were too blunt, or too finely sharpened to do the creature justice – to say nothing of bad paper and poor canvas.

Mr Lowndes' temper was fraying badly.

'God damn it, man! Hold the horse's head _higher_! _Higher!'_ he barked at the groomsman holding the horse's bridle. 'I'm not painting a dray-horse with his head in the muck! How do you expect me to paint the damn animal like this?!'

He threw down his brush in frustration. His fingers were shaking again, Lizzie noticed.

'Pa-?'

'Don't _fuss_ , Bess. _Leave_ it!' her father snapped. 'Always pick-pick-picking at dear old Papa, aren't you? Can't you leave well enough alone, for once?'

He broke off , looking away at the hurt expression in his daughter's eyes. 'Aha – I'm sorry, my dear. I'm not…myself. Take a walk, why don't you? Sketch the harbour, or something. Only I need to conquer _this_ …' he glared at the inoffensive Bucephalus, quietly munching on the hay in his loosebox 'This abominable piece of…'

Lizzie didn't need to be told twice. When Pa was one of his sulks, he pecked savagely at everyone around him like a broody hen, clucking over his art. But he had never been in quite such a foul temper before. He would be better working it out by himself.

Besides, Lizzie brightened at the prospect of the harbour. She _had_ promised herself an attempt at sketching the ship. And the thick woodland around Setauket head could possibly be a classical arbour, if she really exerted herself before the light faded…

Strangers were still a novelty in Setauket; Elizabeth still noticed the occasional furtive glance from passers-by. But really, Lizzie didn't think herself particularly noticeable. To be sure, she was comely, in the way that all young girls in good health are, but her eyes were perhaps a little sharp; made into bright round little dark buttons by too much study. And she was rather too hasty with her hands and feet to be called ladylike. The best Lizzie had ever been able to say of her own reflection, was that with a little care and a pretty gown, she could be a pert lady's maid in a comedy of manners.

Lizzie found herself sadly disappointed by the harbour. It was an afternoon as grey and dull as ditchwater. The mysterious sea-mist had long since departed, and apart from a slovenly fellow shucking open oysters with a big knife, the waterfront was deserted. Even the supply ship had moved off further out to sea, an indiscernible black blotch on a heaving grey sea.

Still. With the cool sea-breeze in her face and the rustle of sea-grass, it was a thousand times better than staying with Pa in one of his moods.

Lizzie opened her own battered journal, taking the liberty of an upturned bucket as her seat, and began to draw.

She drew the shoreline, at first , tethered to the little jetty that served Setauket's fishermen. The shadows changed over the water, so there was little chance of capturing the billows, but she caught the feathery edges of the sea grass, the sharp lines of the planks…Pa's rejected pencil worked very well for her once she began in earnest.

Slowly, Lizzie's face softened as she grey more absorbed in her work. The lines of habitual worry that drew her eyebrows together vanished altogether when she drew – for there was the edge of the chandler's house to draw, that far-off line of roof that Anna had told her was the DeJong farm…

She didn't notice how the hours passed. Or the tramp-tramp of the change of guard behind her. Time and space became very distant things altogether one Lizzie had her attention buried in her rough copies.

But after an hour and a half of undisturbed peace, Lizzie felt a cold prickle, right between her shoulder-blades. It was nothing at first – just the vague sensation that someone was looking at her. Hardly anything much.

But it grew. It was an insistent, invasive feeling. Someone was watching her, just beyond her line of vision. ..

Lizzie forced herself to stare at the horizon, drawing her cloak about her like a protective shield. The sea blended with the sky, just at the furthest point. If she used the blunt side of her charcoal to _just_ outline that cloud _there_ …

 _I'm not going to give in and look around_ , she thought to herself. _I'm not. Whoever it is will get bored and go away_. _People are always curious, especially in small towns. It's probably just a local who's never seen an artist before-_

But it was no good. It was like an _itch_ now, that crawling feeling at the back of her neck…

Lizzie paused to wipe a charcoal smudge from the inside of her wrist, peering around the confines of her cap, before determinedly staring at a seagull poking hopefully around Robeson's oyster stall.

She concentrated on the seagull. Perhaps just a touch of charcoal, for the colour at the edge of its wing?

There was a polite schoolmaster's 'ahem' from behind her.

Lizzie finally, reluctantly, turned her head. There was no mistaking that delicately-pitched voice.

Or, now she came to think of it, the disagreeable intrusion.

Back in the prosperous days of York City, Lizzie had seen an automaton from France displayed at a fair. It was all wax, wispy horsehair, and lifeless glass eyes, but it moved, in a halting, ticking way; _almost_ like a human being. Had you stripped the steel skeleton of its waxen shell and dressed it in flesh and regimentals, you might possibly have had Lieutenant Simcoe.

It gave Lizzie something of a jolt to realize he had been quite so close. Simcoe was an unknown, faintly alarming element. Their bizarre encounter at the encampment had both alarmed and irritated her. Lizzie didn't like _guessing_ at people; she liked to make sense of what she saw – and there seemed no rhyme or reason for his appearing _now_.

'Still hard at your labours, Miss Lowndes? They must be Herculean, indeed.' There was something like a smile in the pale thin-boned face hovering over her shoulder. 'You are a diligent apprentice to your trade…'

Lizzie indignantly shut up her sketchbook.

'I find the sea-breeze rather _cold_ ,' she said frostily, preparing to rise from her seat with as much dignity as possible. 'If you don't mind, sir, I think I shall withdraw – '

Something akin to chagrin flickered visibly across the lieutenant's face.

'But I _do_ mind,' he said. 'I mind it very much. I would rather you stayed _exactly_ where you are, Miss Lowndes. _Do_ sit down?'

It wasn't a question. It was a command. But Lizzie bridled at his tone; and there were no patrons to conciliate here. Her eyes flashed.

'Given the nature of your… talk last time, _sir,_ I do **not** want your company or your conversation.' she said sharply, picking up her skirts

A muscle twitched convulsively in the lieutenant's cheek. For a moment, Lizzie thought the gentlemanly mask might drop; but no. Whatever internal clockwork propelled the man forward resumed its course.

'I own my blunder, and I understand how unforgivable it must seem…' His voice took on the carefully rehearsed note of a schoolboy declaiming a piece of Latin. 'Surely a gentlewoman will pardon a man long estranged from polite society?'

He finished by looking down expectantly at Lizzie.

Did he want a round of applause? Lizzie wondered irritably. But on the other hand - for Pa's sake, it would be better to make peace.

She hesitated a moment.

'I believe I _can_ forgive you,' she said, somewhat stiffly, reluctantly resuming her seat. 'Since you took the trouble to make a more gentlemanly apology...'

She very nearly took back her words at the sight of his self-satisfied smile. But Simcoe had already discarded his penitence; as something he had no further use for. He was already glancing inquisitively over her shoulder at her sketchbook.

'May I?'

'I-'

The clumsily bound portfolio was pulled from Lizzie's hands before she could so much as utter a protest. Simcoe deftly teased open a page, examining it closely.

'This is the harbour here?'

'Yes,' Lizzie said shortly. 'I was sketching it.'

'You work hard.' There was the scratch as Simcoe flicked over the sheet absently with one finger. 'And studies, I see! This is the tavern. And _this…'_ He paused.

'It's the encampment around the church. From when the major was sitting for his portrait.'

'And you found the time to make … _strikingly_ accurate sketches of military defences, I see?'

'What?' Lizzie blanched at the implication. 'No! I mean – the Major wanted something of the camp in the background, with the regiment colours, and I thought I could –

'Isn't that your father's job?' Simcoe said lightly. He peered closer. 'Oh, look – there's the oyster-major himself! He _is_ rather short next to the horse, isn't he? Still. Hewlett's not a tactical man.'

And with a sharp movement, he calmly tore the page clean away from its binding.

Lizzie looked aghast. Sketchbooks weren't for _tearing_ ; paper was expensive, hoarded up with care. She could have simply altered the encampment drawing!

'Just a precaution, of course.' Simcoe vaguely seemed to notice her stunned expression. 'Oh. Would you like the part with the major back? And the horse, of course. Can't forget Incitatus…'

With painstaking care (that nonetheless made Lizzie grit her teeth), he tore the drawing sharply in half again.

Simcoe returned the mutilated sketch to her, another unnatural smile stretching the corners of his mouth. On the flimsy page, a small Major Hewlett patted three-quarters of a horse, the back legs abruptly sheared off at the edge of the paper. It looked _absurd_ , like a bar-room caricature.

'I should draw more seascapes, if I were you,' he said. 'But _very_ well done, indeed. You even noted the gun placements! _And_ the palisades.' He looked admiringly down at the half-sheet of drawing in his hand. 'Yes, very well done.'

Lizzie couldn't trust herself to speak . Gathering her things about her through a red mist of rage, she turned with as much hauteur as she could muster towards the tavern.

'Miss Lowndes? One moment.' The unnatural smile was still stretched across Lieutenant Simcoe's face. 'I shall escort you back.'

Even all the hauteur of Diana herself couldn't save Lizzie's sense of dignity here, being solemnly escorted hardly more than twenty paces to the inn door. It was like an absurd form of arrest. And the lieutenant made her a flourishing bow upon parting that made her clench her fists beneath her silk apron. Couldn't the man just _go_?

She didn't take the trouble to look behind her as she bolted into safety, which was perhaps just as well for her peace of mind. Had she glanced from her window into the street below, she would have seen the lean figure of the obtrusive lieutenant; still examining the torn scrap of drawing in one hand with evident approval.

Fortunately, the tavern was all but deserted when Lizzie made her hasty entrance. It was early afternoon. Lizzie had space to unloose her hat, and breathe easily; something she had scarcely done since the polite 'ahem'. She leant against the door as though barricading herself in, calming herself, before hurrying to her room.

 _Most_ of the regiment were amiable fellows who simply wanted a quiet place to drink their pay away, with a few humorous ballads and a comic song or two. Making room for a painter and his daughter made no odds to them, and conciliating people on Pa's behalf was half of Lizzie's life. It wasn't usually a hard task. It was something Lizzie was a practiced hand at, and she had learned which ones to avoid.

Sergeant Easton was a plump little weasel with nasty, calculating eyes beneath his curled brown wig. Before one evening was out, he had tricked Pa out of nearly four shillings in a rigged game of lansquenet. Lizzie persuaded him away eventually – although not without a round of mocking sniggers that had brought the colour to Lizzie's cheeks and murder into her eyes.

Captain Joyce was not so bad, but he _never_ had money. Lizzie had been right about his freely sponging drinks from all and sundry; sometimes from his own officers. After three days casual acquaintance with the comings and goings of the army, Lizzie came to the conclusion that Captain Joyce actually did very little. He left most of his duties to his lieutenants and then genially took the credit - in _addition_ to borrowing money from them. Lieutenant Appleton was known to glower viciously in Joyce's direction when the Captain was making particularlyfree.

Lizzie _understood_ Captain Joyce, and Easton, and Lieutenant Appleton. She had a gentle understanding of them all, from the brisk little Major right down to gentle Ensign Baker, who had a particular fondness for spending his scanty pay on cold ham and penny ale.

But she did _not_ understand the grim enigma that was Lieutenant Simcoe.

He wasn't a _carouser_ , that much was certain. Living in the inn had given her glimpses of the unofficial officer's mess in the snuggery.

She would have been more at ease if he had been a drinker like Joyce and Easton; Lizzie _knew_ carousers. Oh, he sat with his fellow officers drinking whatever brandy was put in front of him, _yes_ ; but he didn't drink like other men. Despite Anna's grim description of him as a 'mad dog', he was almost stonily in control with his liquor.

But there was _something_ that unnerved every man he came into contact with. No-one nudged elbows, or stood treat with Simcoe. No-one called on him for a song, or to read aloud from any of the Loyalist broadsheets. Whether it was his sneering mien, or that air of barely restrained threat, you couldn't tell – but there was a sharply defined space around him whilst he sat in haughty state by the hearth. And everyone breathed more easily once he was gone.

Easton offered a sort of jackal's homage to Simcoe, Lizzie had noticed. He was deferential; ingratiating, even, although with the wary eyes of a schoolboy who acknowledges the master with the switch. Whereas he was downright insolent with Appleton, who everyone frankly acknowledged as something of a buffoon.

Mrs Strong was right. The man was _dangerous_.

But after this initial encounter, curious to say, Elizabeth quite forgot about him. She was concentrating on making things safe for Pa.

It took Lizzie a while to master the currents of Setauket society. Small towns move with the ebb and flow of public opinion so suddenly, that you can lose your footing before you know where you are. There were far more things to concern her than one vaguely unpleasant officer.

For instance, the suspect liberal families – who had hitherto quite looked down their noses at that 'little Lowndes fellow' – suddenly became fairly warm towards Lizzie ; as warm as any condescending country family can be towards a penniless stranger. She strongly suspected Mrs Strong to have had a hand in the matter, but Anna twinklingly denied all knowledge of _that_.

' Not I! It must have been Selah,' she said innocently, after an effusive tallow-merchant's wife had accosted a startled Lizzie in the street. 'I'm sure he's put in a good word for you – _and_ your father. What did Mrs Sampson want from you again?'

'Portrait of her children,' Lizzie said dazedly. 'Wants a half-length from Pa. And her husband wants a painting of the house he's building…'

'Well, word gets around in a small town,' Anna said amiably. 'You'd be surprised how far it travels. And as your father's being entertained at Whitehall, he passes muster for most Setauket folks. Not _everyone_ is good enough for Mr Woodhull, magistrate.'

Lizzie looked up. There was that note of bitterness again. She'd heard it before with Mr Strong, at the sitting in the Strong parlour– and now there was a sharp, pained splinter of it in Anna's voice, too.

Mr Woodhull didn't seem to have many friends. Lizzie had only seen the man once, at one of the major's scheduled sessions; and he looked much like any other country gentleman she'd ever seen; middle-aged, a strong man running to seed, faintly-self-satisfied. He had bustled in on with the air of a minister of state.

It would have been funny, Lizzie thought uneasily, if it didn't brew so much ill-will in the town.

'You don't like him?' she asked, curiously.

'Nothing against the man.' Anna said tightly. 'Not much _for_ him, either, mind. He throws his weight about. Pretends he's some sort of ambassador for the colonies to the major. And he doesn't mind taking what he can from others, if it suits _him_.'

She turned, looking at Lizzie gingerly from out of the corner of her eye. 'Some of the families here think Woodhull's a sycophant. Worse than that – he'll size up property for the taking if you're suspected of being a patriot.'

Lizzie swallowed. This was dangerous ground. Anna had never been quite so open about her leanings before.

'Lucky Pa and I are paupers,' she said lightly. 'We haven't anything worth the taking.'

'You're lucky,' Anna said, broodingly staring out at the horizon towards Oyster Bay. 'Because those that have…'

Anna was all that was left of the Smith family on Long Island now, and that seemed to be warning enough against strong opinions in politics. The rest of her family were in hiding in the further reaches of Connecticut with some of the Strongs. Selah Strong had three brothers, two of whom were… somewhere. With the Continentals, it was guessed – or some roving band of militia, picking off redcoats wherever they found them. And there was only one, palsy-stricken old man left out of the formidable Brewster clan.

In Loyalist-occupied Setauket, the majority were just ordinary people who didn't want trouble; people who didn't want their ricks burnt or their houses torched by _either_ side.

'A word to the wise, Liz,' Anna said quietly, as they passed from the safe open road into the close-huddled outskirts of Setauket. ' _Keep a close eye on your father_.'

'What?' Lizzie stared. 'But… he's not had drink for three days now. I took away his _money_ -'

' _Not_ the drink.' Mrs Strong pulled her to one side, under pretence of adjusting her own cap. ' _Listen_. Your father's made a friend of the army here. That's good for him, I see that. But that could get him into trouble in a _different_ way. With _other_ people. You understand me?'

Lizzie felt her insides turn cold. It hadn't occurred to her that out here in the country, things weren't as clear-cut as in newly retaken New York. She'd thought the only risks were cheap gin and no commissions.

'Keep him busy,' Anna said carefully. 'Get him … _other_ paintings. The Sampsons, the DeJongs – any county family will do. But keep him _balanced_.'

 _That way you keep him safe_ , Mrs Strong's dark eyes said, as she straightened. 'I'll do what I can for you,' she said, in a deliberately loud, pleasant voice, as they entered the tavern. 'I'll put in a word with Mr Dejong. He has a new pretty little wife; I'm sure he can be persuaded to sit for your father…'

And with that, she bustled off in the direction of her parlour.

It was a well-meant, well-staged scene. But Lizzie stared after her, open dismay written across her face.

It was as much as she could do to keep Pa focused on the Major's commission as it _was_. The tempting lure of 'genteel conversation' called to him at _every_ opportunity; and Pa, of course, took every opportunity.

How was she to persuade him to paint the DeJongs into the bargain?

But Anna's warning had frightened her.

Pa might be waylaid by disgruntled Setauket boys, looking for a soft target for their anger with the army. He might be rolled for his thrice-battered silver pocket-watch on his way home from Whitehall, left for dead in a ditch...

He might be actually dea–

That _thought_ made her stomach clench.

Balance. Keep Pa balanced, that was the key. Keep him safe. Make friends. Make _allies._

She followed Anna into the parlour, and carefully closed the door.

'I'll have to do it,' she said bluntly.

'What?' Anna started. 'I thought he was painting now-'

'Pa _can't_. Not with the trouble he's having with the Major's painting.' Lizzie avoided the unspoken question in Anna's eye. 'I – could you manage it with the DeJongs? It'll be _my father_ painting it, but…'

'The work will be yours? _Again_?'

'It's easy,' Lizzie said quickly. 'I'm just an apprentice, remember? I make the first few impressions, Pa gives it the master-touch…'

 _And that was a poor excuse the first time, Liz._ Mrs Strong's face almost said as much.

'What about the paintings you've promised to the Sampsons? Will your father be using his 'acolyte' there, too?'

'No!' Lizzie said vehemently. 'It's not like that! I can get Pa to do the landscape and the half-length. He just needs a little time to get used to it again…'

'Does it not help now he's clear of the drink?' Anna's voice softened. 'He seems better than he was when he first arrived…'

Lizzie shook her head. Her cap slipped forward over one eye, showing an unruly tousle of dark curls. It wanted combing, Anna thought. And there was a thin, exhausted look to the girl's eyes that hadn't been there before.

'You need sleep before anything,' Anna said firmly. 'And clean linen for tomorrow. The DeJongs are _particular_.' She ushered a faintly protesting Lizzie towards the stairs. 'We'll _see_ about the rest, Miss.'


	5. A Lady's Initrigue

_How strangely active are the arts of peace,  
Whose restless motions less than war's do cease!  
Peace is not freed from labour but from noise;  
And war more force, but not more pains employs_

John Dryden, _To the Lord Chancellor Hyde_

The DeJong family was a sprawling set of well-to-do Dutch farmers whose fathers had settled in New Amsterdam. They had never strayed far from Long Island since; the 'Engels' settlers were flighty fly-by-night settlers by comparison to the DeJongs – and they showed as much.

'They're _proud_ ,' Anna commented before the looking glass next morning. She had overtaken Elizabeth's toilette, and was sharply teasing her hair into careful symmetry. 'Or Master Martin is; which amounts to the same thing. The whole family keeps up a front as though they were still fine merchant-men. And they don't have much to do with us. But they'll _do_.'

Lizzie winced beneath the sharp smack of the horse-hair brush. 'They will?'

'They don't take kindly to bloody-backs, put it that way. If you get a commission from him, and the Sampsons – you and your pa should do.' Anna stood back, to admire her handiwork. 'There, that's much better. You don't look so much like a bird's nest.'

Lizzie's hands had crept up gingerly to her head. 'Is my head still _there_?'

'Sauce,' Anna said tolerantly. 'Did your Widow Winant never show you how to put up your hair-'

There was a sudden crash of a table overturning below stairs. An irate baritone murmur could be heard dimly through the floorboards.

'What on earth –'

Both Lizzie and Anna froze. Mischief in a tavern _never_ ends well.

'That's Selah – Anna said, listening harder. 'Stay here. I'll see what's amiss-'

'Wait-'

In a confused flutter of anxiety, both Anna and Lizzie ventured on to the landing. The voices had dropped a little.

'…and you've come _here_!? Now!? Any other corn chandler would have you posted over town as a defaulter, Woodhull, and you _know_ it. If it were any _other_ man…' Selah had dropped his voice into an angry vehement hiss. 'Any other _honest_ man…'

'I paid De Huyler _back_ ,' said another voice insistently. 'The _full_ strength of what I owed him…'

'Ay, with your father's money! How many times has _he_ bailed you out?'

There was a long, hostile silence from below – but Lizzie hardly noticed that. What she _did_ notice was that Anna Strong's face had gone deathly-white. She breathlessly held one hand over her stays as though to keep herself contained, dark eyes suddenly over-bright.

'Abraham?' she murmured, and took the stairs at a run.

'Who is it?' Lizzie whispered anxiously over the banisters. 'Anna, is it the magistra-'

But Anna was already gone, in an agitated whisk of skirt.

'Selah!' her voice sounded falsely bright. 'You never said we had a visitor, this early…'

'We don't,' Selah said abruptly. 'Mr Woodhull was just leaving.'

Lizzie slunk cat-like down the stairs. Anna had left the door open behind her in her haste - and even from here she could see Mr Strong's darkening scowl.

The visitor himself did not seem particularly eager to leave. He hovered indecisively, hat in hand on the threshold, darting a quick uneasy look between Anna and her husband.

'Morning, Anna. Eh – Selah's right. I'm just…'

'But this is the first time in a sennight you've come to town!' Anna sounded suddenly over-eager in her merriment. 'Come, you must give us the gossip at least! Is Mary well-prepared for her lying-in? I know Mrs Tallmadge stopped by to see her…'

'She did, I believe. She's a sure hand, they say. She's helped with her grandchildren often enough…'

Still.' There was the shadow of a smile in Mr Woodhull's voice. 'Mary is determined to have a doctor. As it's the first-'

'Of many, I hope?'

Lizzie took the opportunity to sidle crabwise down the stairs into the parlour.

'I hope.' Abraham plucked at a loose thread in his cocked hat. 'and Mary hopes, I think.'

'Good,' Selah broke in. 'Very good. Still. Must make you uneasy, leaving the farm at such a time, Abraham. I won't keep you.' He stared down the slighter man, until Abraham looked away. There was an invisible contest of wills going on between the innkeeper and young farmer Woodhull. 'You can depend on it; there will be _other matters_ to attend to shortly. Give my respects to _your_ Mary?'

The young farmer started, as if stung. He gripped his hat and swung from the door without more than a civil nod.

Mrs Strong rounded on her husband as soon as the door swung shut.

'What was _that_ about, Selah?'

'Nothing, Annie. Farmer's talk. Nothing more.'

'You might have called me down sooner. And that was un-neighbourly, letting him leave like a stranger….'

'His wife'll _need_ him, Anna. She's over eight months gone. Struggling around the farm alone with only a couple of field hands? What sort of fool leaves his wife alone at a time like that?'

When Anna next spoke, her voice was bleak and quiet. 'That's for Abe to decide, isn't it? Besides,' she gave a poor attempt at a carefree laugh, 'Much you would know of that, Selah. Or I.'

There was a sharp scrape of a chair being pushed back from the next room. It sounded rather as though Selah had just leapt up from his chair. His voice, when he spoke, was appalled.

'Annie… you know I didn't mean…'

'I know, Selah.' Anna said wearily. 'It just…struck me. That was all. I married you six months before Abe – I mean, before Abraham married Mary. And s _he's_ \- God, she's already with child. ..'

'What does that matter?' Selah's voice was low. 'You're worth ten times more than that simpering china doll, Annie. And children! Children take… time. What, look at my mother! She'd been married to my father a full ten years before...'

There was a long silence. But it was full of more than words could possibly say.

'Annie…' Selah said gently – and very, very hesitantly, as though picking his way over red-hot coals. 'You know… even if we – we had none. Ever. You - you don't think I'd value you any less, do you? Or… ever…reproach you? You're my _wife_.'

There was a choked sob from Anna.

'Bless you for that, Selah. You're too good for me, I know…'

Lizzie felt guilty at playing spy to such a tender scene. She should _not_ have been there to overhear. Hastily, she coughed and stamped her feet at the bottom of the stairs, so it sounded as though she was just coming down from above.

By the time she entered the empty little tavern, Mr Strong had vanished behind the little booth with his casks of beer and room, quill-pen in hand. Anna had surreptitiously wiped her eyes on a corner of her apron; and was all brisk smiles again, her armour back on.

'There!' she said quickly. 'Pardon me, Lizzie. If you're ready – I can make you an introduction with Mr DeJong…'

They left. But not before Lizzie darted a glance filled with new respect towards Selah Strong, huddled over his accounting book .

* * *

Mynheer Martin preferred to spend his leisure hours in the snuggery of whatever tavern would take him; which meant his daughter was often there with him, entreating him to come home in broken English and swift rapid-fire Dutch. He was not at home when the ladies called, although Miss Jenneke was.

Jenneke Dejong was the girl Lizzie had seen the first night they had arrived. She was a plump, blushing girl with long lank brown hair, free from curl, and a limp unstarched coif, and she barely had a word to say to Anna on the doorstep.

But Jenneke warmed to Lizzie. It was common ground, so to speak, a father who liked his taproom friends. She did not get on with her new mother, and she had few friends in Setauket. Company her own age was almost as novel as the painting. Lizzie was immediately invited into the warm DeJong kitchen; as Anna retreated, satisfied that her groundwork had been done.

'You are… the painter's daughter, yes?' Miss DeJong said timidly hurrying over to the fire to tend a simmering pot, under the watchful eye of a kitchen maid. ' _Vader_ says you have travelled all the way from New York.'

'Well, we lived there for a while...' Lizzie had been too taken up by undoing her portfolio to observe the wistful note in Jenneke's voice.

'Oh, it is a big, fashionable city there, cousin Henrik says,' Jenneke breathed, a dreamy look clouding her eye. The maid hastily intervened as the pot threatened to bubble over. 'You can see the ladies walk up and down the street, in their silks – just so! And there is music and amusements, and cock-fighting if you like . Henrik saw it twice! And –'

'It wasn't quite so grand where we lived,' Lizzie smiled across the table. She knew a fellow dreamer when she saw one, and Jenneke clearly saw New York as some sort of Celestial City, replete with heavenly amusement and occupation. 'Pa and I lodged on Moore Street. It was just a lodging-house. There was a linen-draper down the street, but it wasn't a silk-merchant-'

Jenneke looked at her as if she was an idiot. 'But you could _buy_ things,' she said pityingly. 'You lived in a _city!_ It is fashionable, to live in town. Cousin Henrik is going to live there when he is apprenticed to the Van Tuyls…'

'Your cousin Henrik is a great traveller?'

'Only when his father goes to town. Every six months. Still. Henrik has _been_ there!' Jenneke sniffed, a look of disapproval crossing her face. ' _Clara_ has been to New York, of course.'

Clara DeJong was the subject of Lizzie's painting, and the 'pretty little wife' of Mynheer Martin. Lizzie found her to be a giggling, rather shallow little thing, scarcely older than she was. She seemed ready enough when it came to looking after the DeJong brood, for Jenneke had seven smaller brothers and sisters– but she had a certain… sleekness, like a cat fed with cream.

'She was in school with me, you know?' Jenneke said suddenly. He hands twisted sharply about the fowl she was ostensibly plucking for dinner, tearing out feathers by the handful. 'She is only two years older than me. But there! _Moder_ dies of childbed fever, and _Vader_ wants a new wife to warm his bed within a twelvemonth. And Clara – Clara has a nice fat dowry, too…'

Lizzie didn't know what to say. In some ways, Pa was better than she realised. He had never inflicted a stepmother on her.

'Is she – is she unkind to you?' she ventured. Perhaps Clara made her daughters sit in the cold ashes in their bare feet, although Jenneke's warm mulberry gown and the scurrying kitchen maids suggested otherwise.

'I _wish_ she was,' Jenneke said moodily. 'No. Clara is not unkind. She… _tries_. But she would be happier if I were married, like my older sisters. With my _own_ household. But… this is _my_ home!'

It was a cry from the heart.

Jenneke, Lizzie silently realised, was much like Setauket itself.

Suddenly these polite, threatening almost-strangers were here, occupying your home, taking your place; emphatically pushing people away. It didn't matter how hard they tried to get you to _like_ it. Or even if they were nice. And if you couldn't leave, because it was the only place you could call home…

'Couldn't you… get away? Like your cousin Hendrik?' Lizzie thought hard. 'You could be prenticed to a milliner or something – something genteel-in the city…'

She spoke encouragingly, thinking that might appeal to Jenneke, but the DeJong girl looked shocked. 'A _shop girl_? ' she shook her head, furiously. 'You forget; I have my family to consider. I am a DeJong. _Vader_ would never let me work like a common drudge…'

 _Except at home_ , Lizzie thought privately. But she kept that thought to herself.

'What do _you_ want then, Jenneke?' she asked, remembering that question of Mrs Strong's that had so unnerved her during her first week. 'Not what Clara wants, or your father. You.'

'Me?'

A distracted, blushing look came over Jenneke's freckled face. 'I would like a husband, you know. A nice city husband. But there are no city men here in Setauket, apart from the soldiers…' Jenneke giggled. 'Though some of them _are_ handsome, yes? You are lucky. You see them all the time, living in the Strong tavern…'

'Psh _, all_ the time!' Lizzie retorted, amused. 'I see you there too!'

'Yes, but only when _Vader_ is in.' Jenneke dropped her eyes. 'Not always when _he_ is there…'

There was a whole world of longing in Jenneke's voice.

Oh _dear_. Lizzie thought. It was like _that_ , was it? There was a village swain in the mix too.

'Do you have a sweetheart in there? A Setauket boy?' she asked coaxingly, peering at Jenneke's crimsoning face under her linen cap.

'N -not exactly.' The Dutch girl had gone the colour of a ripe strawberry, 'Ach, I should not say! I did not mean to tell so much…' she threw her apron over her head in a fever of embarrassment – but Lizzie knew, from her own experience, that Jenneke _wanted_ her to ask, even as she protested. There comes a point in every fit of girlish calf-love where secrets can no longer be kept.

'Is it… your cousin Hendrik?'

'Hendrik does not drink in the Strong tavern! Besides, he lives out too far.'

'Tom Sampson?'

'He is a baby! Only _fifteen_!'

'Oh? How old are you?'

'Seventeen,' Jenneke said proudly. 'No. Still wrong. Guess again. _Not_ a Setauket boy…'

Lizzie looked askance.

' _I_ can't tell, Miss DeJong. Tell me?'

'He's a soldier… _een knappe Engelsman_ , yes?' Jenneke sighed. Lizzie knew no Dutch, but she followed enough – from the slight giggle of the kitchen maids. 'So handsome!'

Oh _dear_. Lizzie found herself sincerely hoping Jenneke hadn't fancied herself in love with the Major. "Scarlet fever" was all the rage in the British-occupied territories; from the professional women of the town (who knew a steady stream of customers when they saw them) to the tittering schoolgirls reading French novels under their desks. A great many women seemed to hanker for a man with 'musket, pipe and drum'; _especially_ if he was an officer. Officers were presumed to be dukes in disguise, or, at the very least, wealthy – and they were at a premium on the marriage mart.

'And he is a…?' she prompted, delicately.

'Oh.' Jenneke paused, darting a quick glance behind her, before dropping her voice. 'nothing… much. Not a great officer.' Thank _God_ , Lizzie silently thought. There were enough problems with Jenneke's hopeless passion as it was without _that_.

'But he is handsome - handsome enough to be a general if he wanted!'

Jenneke apparently worked on the optimistic assumption that all officers increased in good looks as one ascended the ranks. Lord love us, Lizzie thought – surely she'd _seen_ Captain Joyce?

'He has nice dark eyes, and once…' Jenneke blushed pink as a peony. 'He _smiled_ at me.'

' _And_?' Lizzie nudged her. 'Does he know that you-'

'Oh no!' Jenneke's hands fluttered up to her face. 'No, he… he does not lodge in town. He lives with those farmers – oh…' she waved one hand impatiently, searching for the words. ' _Hannah! De trotse Engels boeren?'_

' _De Woodhulls, Missen.'_ A maid put in.

'Yes! The Woodhulls. So he is not in town… often. Except when he sits and takes ale…'

'In the Strong Tavern?'

Lizzie understood why Jenneke went to retrieve her father herself, despite her flinching and evident discomfort. It was the slender chance of seeing _him_ ; whoever _he_ was.

But something else had pricked her curiosity. 'The _younger_ Woodhull?'

' _Ja._ Mynheer Richard Woodhull's son, Abraham.' Jenneke sniffed. 'H **e is… small.'**

' _Een garnaal!'_

'Yes, as Hannah says – a shrimp!'

Another titter rose around the kitchen. Master DeJong's household clearly had no qualms about cheerfully eavesdropping on their young mistress, no matter whether the conversation was in Dutch or in English. Jenneke had almost-sisters rather than servants.

'So…' Lizzie said cheerfully. 'Will you be asking for a wedding portrait then? In good time? I can _certainly_ arrange with Pa-'

'Ssssh!'

The sound of the DeJong door opening set Jenneke and the maids all in a flutter. A scared, blank look came over Jenneke's face.

' _Vader_ is home,' she said, holding one finger to her lips. 'Mrs Strong must have sent him back…'

There was a marked hush when Mynheer Martin entered the room.

He proved to be a round-faced man, although his pink-cheeked countenance was seriously belied by his sharp manner.

'You are the painter girl?' he said irritably, passing his hat to a suddenly submissive kitchen-maid. ' _Ja_ , nothing here for you! Missis Strong has more time and money to waste than I….' He made shooing motions with his hands, as though Lizzie was an errant chicken who had strayed into the kitchen by accident. 'Cornelia? Show Missen Lowndes _out_!'

" _Vader_!' Jenneke jumped up, scandalised. An eloquent flood of Dutch followed, sharply interspersed with terse little shakes of the head from Mynheer Martin.

Lizzie stood there rather foolishly, portfolio clasped in her arms.

" _Alsjeblieft! Ik vind haar aardig!"_ There was a definite note of entreaty in Jenneke's voice – but Mynheer Martin clucked and fussed like a broody hen in his mother tongue.

'No, thank you!' he said firmly, as the chastened maid at last showed Lizzie the door. 'Another time, not today!'

Jenneke followed close on her heels as she was all but pushed out of the DeJong house.

'I'm sorry!' she hissed, apologetically. 'He has been with his banker today, he is alw _ays_ crochety. I should have remembered...' she gulped. ' _Please_ , come again. On Saturday afternoon, he will be in the tavern then...'

'What?' Lizzie was rather dazed by this confusing see-saw of opinions. 'But your father _said_ -'

'Never mind what he said!' Jenneke said urgently, fishing in her pocket for something. 'Please. I _need_ to speak with you. Come on Saturday!'

To Lizzie's surprise, she pulled out a small leather book and thrust it into her hand. 'I'm sorry!'

And then the door shut in Lizzie's face.

* * *

It wasn't the warmest of welcomes, by a long shot. It was certainly more perplexing than she expected. Why had Jenneke asked to see her again? It was very clear that Mynheer Martin held the purse-strings; and pretty young wife or not, he wasn't willing to spend money on anything that didn't _make_ money in turn.

But Miss DeJong had been so insistent; and then she gave her _this_ …

Lizzie turned the little quarto volume over and over in her hands. There was no title on front or spine, and the frontispiece was in Dutch, in a cramped, rusty print that made Lizzie's eyes hurt just looking at it.

 _Emblemata amatoria_ was all that she could make. The author was a certain Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft.

What on _earth_ …?

Oh well. Lizzie shook her head and began to head back towards town. Perhaps Pa had somewhat better luck with his paintings today…

Mr Lowndes had not had better luck with his paintings. He would have arrived home in a very irritable frame of mind, had it not been for the cordial invitation of Mr Woodhull - 'So very agreeable my dear – picture of gentlemanly condescension!' – to take a glass of port with him. One glass had turned into three, and three had turned into…

Well. However many it had taken for Pa to merrily reel his way homeward in the dark, loudly singing the "British Grenadiers" at the top of his voice. In light of Anna's warning, it seemed a mercy he had made it back in one piece. Pa was happy as a schoolboy, and stumbled immediately to his bed; so there was no harm done.

But still, it made her breathless to think about what _could_ have happened. And tonight neither of the Strongs could have raised the alarm. They were "seeing to their household affairs" at Strong Manor; which, in light of the tender looks Lizzie had seen, might well have been a euphemism.

At least _someone_ was happy, Lizzie thought, as she pulled her nightdress over her head. Even if… there still seemed something faintly amiss with the Strongs. There was an underlying current of unhappiness that tugged Mrs Strong's smile downwards. She wondered what it was; Setauket seemed to be full of secrets. The buried resentment of politics. The innkeepers. Not to mention the hapless Jenneke…

She turned over Mr Corneliszoon Hooft's book by the flickering light of the greasy tallow candle. How on earth was she supposed to make head or tail of a book in _Dutch…?_

And then a spurt of black ink caught her eye.

Someone had written – in the careful square letters of someone only just able to write – just one line of writing on the flyleaf.

 **His name is Ensign Baker.**


End file.
